Untitled

Since the 1980s, Smith has addressed the themes of bodies, mortality, and decay. Photography, sculpture, and drawing operate alongside one another in Smith’s oeuvre to convey a sense of bodily contingency and flux. Although artworks in their own right, many of her photographs, such as this one, also document the gestation of her sculptures. This process image of the cast of a human head—stoic and yet bearing apparent blemishes—brings forth parallels between the traces left by the artist’s hand on the surface of the sculpture, and the traces of light that produced the photographic image. Both mediums come together as a reference to the passage of time and the artist’s ability to seemingly stop time.