Our fleshy envelop is so close to us, yet at time we forget its resemblance to nature. Plants, rocks, mountains, sand, salt, water, animals and human beings are all natural elements. They are also the elements from which I create my photographs.

In my images I like to emphasize that the human body is often the mirror of nature.

Nature is astonishing, perfect, even if we might frequently think it is not. Each object has its place there, its function and its unique beauty.

Harmony emerges from the differences and similarities that yield such perfection. I try to elicit harmony by juxtaposing human bodies of all types with natural elements to produce unexpected encounters.

With my pencil I first draw the concepts I envision, and with photography I freeze this harmony of forms, matter, and colors by drawing with light. The photographs assembled in SKIN constitute the result of this research. The body becomes line, curve, texture and then contrasts, combines to create a symbiosis uniting the fragile and the sharp, tender and tough, black and white, masculine and feminine, mankind and nature.

Harmony from contrast. A skull, a knee, an outstretched arm, a hand, a back, a belly of a pregnant woman. I assemble these bodies and take them apart again, thus giving birth to forms that are often graphic and sometimes abstract. I like to act as a sculptor, fashioning the body with my hands, chiseling it with my lens, using the lines as raw material for integrating everything into a coherent whole.

My pictures do not rely on post-production cut and paste tricks. I play on the ingenuity of the camera angles and trust the skill of my models, who adapt their bodily shapes to the context surrounding them.

In order to breathe spirit into the bodies revealed in this book, I have invited Artists, Composers, Fashion Designers, Dancers, Writers, Curators, Film Makers, Actors, Singers... friends, who have great respect for the world we live in, to express their feelings about art, the body, nature, and humanity.

The human body is a beautiful machine. The symbiosis between body and spirit is extraordinary and fragile. To preserve it we must perpetuate this harmony between human beings and nature.

Laurent Elie Badessi