Erogenous Zones from the View of the Self by Traci Matlock

Issue 20

I remember the first time I read that the molecules of our bodies are not confined by our physical structures. If you stand next to me, pieces of my body will begin to mingle with pieces of yours. And it will also mix with the furniture, the dirt, the fish into which I cut with my fork, the glass that scrapes the fingers, the camera.

It pleases me endlessly to participate (and to voyeur) in the escaping of the body's confines, particularly when the escape cannot be seen with the eye alone.

Physics tells us that our shapes continually careen into new, and in my opinion, equally beautiful and equally grotesque shapes. Combine this movement-seeking nature of our erogenous bodies with the ever-inconstant film image -- and I weaken in the knees. How the body functions with a nod to both science and mind-drawn artifice delights me delights me, drives me.

I photograph the body because it is simultaneously dangerous & vulnerable. I so often photograph my own body because the act becomes more dangerous & more vulnerable. I photograph in duplicates because what is tender is so often what is beautifully mechanized and vice versa. There is too much texture in the world not to try and touch it all at once.

So many contradictions make up the body! And the same set of contradictions dictate the translation between the eye and the final image – via, of course, the camera.

Traci Matlock is a Houston, TX based artist.
To see more of Traci's work, please visit her website