Since turning fifty, I am both more self-conscious of my aging body and more appreciative of all it has created and sustained. In contemplating the procedures that middle-aged women undergo in pursuit of an ideal that reveres youth, freshness, and fertility – plucking, injecting, dying, cutting, tucking, lifting, sculpting, freezing, dissolving, peeling – l see parallels between the preparation of food for consumption, particularly in the meat industry, and the ways women are taught to prepare their bodies for public view. These photographs examine how the bodies of both women and animals are shaped, packaged, and presented for consumption, while asking what it means to find value in a body beyond its usefulness to others.

Inspired by the Surrealist movement and the work of artists like Hannah Wilke, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Whitney Hubbs, Flesh reveals how our attempts to subjugate and exploit the natural world are mirrored in our efforts to control and transform our own bodies and to delay and eventually conquer our own mortality.

More images from this project are available here. For the password, please contact info@christinemagdo.com.