Book excerpt: After having observed the operations of reconstructive surgery and aesthetic surgery, acclaimed figurative painter Jenny Saville was eager to express the violence and anesthetized pain of this experience in her own work. She and fashion photographer Glenn Luchford thus began an artistic collaboration that captures the full range of color, tonality, and topography of live flesh, in large photographic tableaux that portray Saville's own body. Distortions confront and coerce the viewer into an examination of his or her own body and the grotesqueries and beauties inherent within; the images likewise recall biological specimens preserved, disembodied, and disfigured. The collusion of the art and fashion worlds has produced many hybrids in recent years, yet none perhaps none as intensely striking as this series.