IN COLORS PROJECT  ED#4  SKIN

Inside a tent on a rainy afternoon at the Paredes de Coura Festival, a young woman shelters beneath a sheet of transparent plastic. In relation to the theme Skin, the image shifts the idea of skin from the body to the surface surrounding it: a temporary, wet and vulnerable membrane that separates inside from outside and serves as shelter.

The raindrops, creases and small adhesive bandage stuck to the plastic transform this membrane into a vulnerable body. What protects also appears wounded. The image thus creates a boundary: between inside and outside, shelter and exposure, intimacy and resistance.

Footprints press into rippled sand, each hollow a momentary epidermal imprint. Light and tide smooth and sharpen these marks, turning passage into inscription. The shore becomes a living skin: transient, textured, and receptive—where human steps briefly write memory into landscape before the sea erases them.

A young woman confronts the camera with unwavering confidence. The visible patterns on her skin challenge conventional ideas of beauty and invite a deeper reflection on selfhood. The work explores how identity is shaped not by conformity, but by the courage to inhabit one’s own body.

At a 150-year-old dhobi ghat in Kolkata, layers of cloth - used in homes, hospitals, and hotels - arrive carrying the unseen traces of human life.
These fabrics act as a second skin, absorbing moments of joy, illness, labor, and loss. Through the repetitive act of washing, the visible dirt fades, but the memory of human touch lingers.
This image reflects on cleansing not just as a physical act, but as a quiet ritual - where the marks of life are washed away, and in the process, those who clean also carry and release these invisible stories.

Geometric abstraction created through a close-up framing. The high contrast isolates the diagonal lines formed by the structure’s relief. The focus is on texture and the rhythmic repetition of forms. A study of the body’s volume and undulation.

Women stand together in solidarity at Roca Oceanica, days before Chile's national referendum, where citizens will decide whether to replace or maintain the constitution written under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. 

Breastfeeding is a political act: it is about nourishing beyond the physical, strengthening the bond between mother and child. Documenting this act encourages a revolution for food security, for building support networks and for breaking the stigma that the breast is merely a sexualised part of the body. That is why talking about breastfeeding is talking about resistance. In a body so often controlled and judged, this choice affirms the right to nourish, to be supported and to occupy one’s own body in its entirety.

A young child peers through the dark doorway of a fragile mud house, her eyes carrying innocence mixed with hardship. The dim light and worn surroundings reflect poverty, loneliness, and the untold struggles of childhood in marginalized communities, while her gaze silently asks for hope and a better future.

My daughter likes to make masks out of fabric, handkerchiefs, and paper. It looks so unusual that I reach for a camera.

This is Rafał, who will soon become Nikita, the Goddess of Love. Nikita is a drag queen from Wrocław. Here are some moments from the transformation.

Detail of the hands of a group of Druze sheikhs from the Aridi clan, one of Baysour’s two main families, during the annual Liqaa al-Eid tradition marking the religious holiday of Eid al-Adha. For the Druze sheikhs taking part, the occasion is not so much a celebration as an opportunity to cleanse and renew the soul.

In the image, the hand of Salou, a Mauritanian man I met in Chinguetti when I saw him trying to clear the sand from around his home in the middle of the Sahara with a shovel, holds his guitar.

He invited me into his home, where he told me that he played music at traditional weddings. A little later, Salou fetched his acoustic guitar and played an instrumental piece he often performs at wedding ceremonies. I was fascinated by the contrast between the raw, weathered resilience of Salou’s fingers, firmly gripping the instrument that is his only source of income, and the noble presence of his guitar.

Friends are having fun and cooling off on a hot summer’s day. It’s such a common and familiar scene, but I think it’s turned out really well thanks to the aesthetics and the different skin tones.

In the demanding brick fields of Bangladesh, this portrait reflects more than labor and hardship — it reveals the quiet strength of the human spirit. Through dust-covered skin and unwavering eyes, the image explores "The Territory of Freedom" as a space of dignity, resilience, and inner courage that survives beyond physical struggle.

Marks and textures shows an inner resistance, something no longer hidden. The body becomes a visible site of struggle, carrying the traces of both pain and resilience.

The folds of the foil in the photo demonstrate how our face shown to the outside world becomes distorted when internal tensions or external pressures alter the surface. The layers of the skin record the passage of time, facial expressions, traumas, and lived.

The skin shaped by contact with the world,  it is the toughest part of the body, shaped by constant pressure and recovery, hardened over time to carry the weight of our choices, where even the smallest point holds the full weight of being.

A woman lays by the river near the world’s end in Puerto Natales, Chile.

Bare human feet hang in a tense void above a snarling street dog. This is skin as a vulnerable, suspended territory, existing between concrete and grime. It is a raw, precarious freedom, untouched by the noise beneath yet defined by its distance from it.

A child playing in the coal mines.

Two hands clasp in quiet stillness, their skin a topography of folds, veins, and calluses. Each crease archives labour, tenderness, and time; the clasp both protects and reveals. Here, skin is history - surface as ledger, touch as testimony - where personal memory and embodied experience are held in the palm.

In a ritual of faith, the body is exposed to smoke as an act of spiritual cleansing. The skin bears the marks of devotion - textured, weathered, and vulnerable - while the rising smoke blurs the boundary between the physical and the unseen.
Here, purification is not gentle but intense, where belief transforms discomfort into transcendence. The body becomes a vessel, and the skin a surface through which faith is expressed and released.
This image captures the moment where the material body begins to dissolve into something beyond itself.

This image shows a labourer at a clay factory mixing clay with his feet. The mud-covered feet, marked by labour and repetition, are not merely dirty — they are part of a livelihood. As the clay dries, it forms a hardened layer over the skin, making the worker appear almost as sculptural as the objects shaped from the clay itself.

Over time, the clay becomes a second skin — an identity shaped by labour, material, and survival.

The image is built on the tension between external beauty and internal reality. Skin is not merely a protective layer, but the boundary of the visible world, beneath which lies a fragile yet stable framework - the bones and the internal structure.

It is on the skin of the world, in a primitive gesture, that matter becomes meaning and pretends to be destiny - and I don’t know if I want to let go.

Captured from below, a performer’s body stretches across the frame in a moment of tension and movement. The photograph emphasises skin as an expressive surface through which discipline, strength and cultural identity are communicated. The body itself becomes an act of freedom.

Emerging from the absolute stillness of shadows, the skin reveals itself as life's first sculptural gesture. Here, light does not merely illuminate, it carves a path across the soft contours of young novices, lingering gently on the surface of devotion. In this profound intimacy, the boundaries of the physical body dissolve, turning a simple portrait into a poetic monument of peace, resilience, and inner truth.

Small actions that have a happy effect on others can be done every day.

Clay clings to the artisan’s skin, each finger pressing devotion into form. Human skin moulds earthen flesh, shaping divine skin from soil. In every crease and touch, labour becomes prayer - skin making skin, memory sculpting presence, divinity born through the intimate dialogue of hand and clay.

This photograph captures a raw and vulnerable moment in the ancient craft of parchment making. In the foreground, a kidskin is displayed in all its organic texture, caught in the final stage of a laborious metamorphosis. Here, it is being prepared to transcend its biological nature; it is transitioning from a "mortal skin" into an "immortal surface" for the written word.
While the master craftsman remains a blurred silhouette in the background - symbolizing the silent, tireless labor behind this tradition - the skin itself takes center stage as it prepares to carry thoughts and history for centuries to come. This is the precise instant where a living tissue is preserved through human touch, evolving into a timeless medium that defies the decay of time.

Rows of fish hang to dry, scales glinting and hardening into patterned surfaces. Salt and sun act as conservators, turning flesh into preserved texture. The racks hold more than food: they hold traces of hands, weather, and ritual—surface as skin, labour as memory written into the shore’s economy.

Upon reaching his final station, this young penitent spent the last of his strength lying face down on the ground with his arms outstretched in the form of a cross, fervently praying. Scenes like this are prominent during the observance of Holy Week among Catholics in some Philippine provinces, where penitents and devotees carry wooden crosses barefoot, gash their backs before whipping themselves to draw blood, and even allow themselves to be crucified — all as acts of penance and devotion.
Cuts and callouses envelop their bodies, and in every scar they bear lies a wish for themselves and their loved ones: some for healing from physical illness, many for recovery from life’s deeper wounds.
While society continues to criticize and condemn these acts, not everyone can — or will — truly comprehend the devotion and personal vows behind this long-standing tradition. Penitents value their unwavering faith more than the world’s skepticism; their bodies become landmarks of resilience, sacrifice, and dignity for a beautiful commitment that goes far beyond skin deep.

I found some beautiful specimens of cup mushrooms in the forest. I decided to incorporate them into my own body.

A poor hungry child shares his food with his pet before eating it himself.

Her presence radiates strength and autonomy. A body that gives life and, at the same time, asserts its right to exist fully, without censorship, without being tamed and without fear. Present and in control of herself, she stands at the centre of her own image, transforming motherhood into a political act. Because every free body challenges a structure, and every woman who inhabits her own skin paves the way for a new form of freedom.

Coming from a long walk barefoot, these penitents take a couple of minutes to rest along the pavement—one lying face down, the other standing still. Penitents like them fill the streets and even highways during the observance of Holy Week among Catholics in some Philippine provinces. They carry wooden crosses, gash their backs before whipping themselves to draw blood, and even allow themselves to be crucified—all as acts of penance and devotion.
They are bruised. They suffer cuts and wounds all over their bodies along their walks. They are even ridiculed and criticized. But they proceed, holding on to their vows of faith.

This image aims to explore the nature of skin as something anchored in both presence and absence. The red cloth covering their bodies symbolizes protection and identity, while the exposed skin speaks of physical humanity. I intentionally withheld the subject’s face because I want viewers to ask questions about what is hidden, what they have wanted to see or not see, what cannot be fully covered, and whether what is shown is enough. In doing so, the image resists singular interpretation and instead invites reflection on the many other layers that may lie beneath outward appearances.
Beyond anatomy, skin indeed covers more. It can also set boundaries between discernibility and discretion, familiarity and distance, even selfhood and altruism.

After returning from fishing, this fisherman posed for the photograph, showing one of the fish he had caught.

Although skin sounds like an armor making us appear strong against the outside world, it is actually humanity's most vulnerable place. Created within a studio environment and referencing Caravaggio’s painting, this photograph demonstrates how easily penetrable the surface of power and tyranny (Holofernes) truly is. The entire authority of a colossal commander is shattered by the severance of a few millimeters of skin on his neck by a sword.
Furthermore, the dense red fabric/drape in the background acts almost as a spatial projection of the blood gushing from within, or that raw, red flesh underneath the skin (the ectoderm layer). The artist has enveloped the background in this visceral and claustrophobic atmosphere.

 A poor hungry child shares his food with his pet before eating it himself.

Her wrinkled skin is a majestic landscape where time has carved its deepest paths and the world has left its indelible mark. Through the intimate, rhythmic gesture of her hands, the invisible endurance of a lifetime takes a concrete and beautiful shape. This visible surface transforms into a profound idea. that every wrinkle is a proud monument to survival and unyielding freedom.

While walking by the sea in the city of São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe, I came across this group of young people bathing in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

A tribal girl sharing her heart's feelings with a colourful bird.

An old lady with her grand child.

This image shows a carpet weaver from Panipat, one of India’s major hubs for carpet weaving, working tirelessly at a loom for minimum wage. Through repetitive labour, patience, and skill, the weaver creates handcrafted carpets that travel far beyond the place of their making.

These carpets are often sold at high prices in Western markets, where there is a strong demand for handmade textiles, while the artisans behind them remain largely unseen within the chain of profit and commerce.

Over time, the threads becomes a second skin — an identity shaped by labour, material, and survival.