Robert Lewis - Written on the Skin

»Written on the Skin«

Human skin is a graphic representation of experience, embodying a narrative of endurance and change. And as each marking of the body implies a story, these portraits were made to record those stories. The violence a scar attests to is not always primary in an account of its acquisition; there is pride and survival and good fortune as much as there is trauma and disfigurement and loss.

Initially the project found its subjects amongst the photographer's friends, but as the project grew, so did the range of subjects, many of whom told not only the specifics of their scarring but the ways in which they chronicled their lives through the tracings on their bodies.

Robert Lewis was born in Texas in 1955. After finishing his degree at the Art Center College in Los Angeles, he moved to New York and began working in editorial and music photography for clients such as Sony, MTV, Esquire,Rolling Stone, and the New York Times. He has received numerous prizes and been published in prominent photography magazines.

While working in New York, he has continued to pursue and exhibit his own projects. Currently he is working on what he calls "landscapes of a consumer culture, the inner and outer geographies of its inhabitants".