IN COLORS PROJECT ED#4 SKIN
Skin is surface and territory – the first sculptural gesture of life. It is where light lingers, the world is imprinted, and desire manifests; where time, belonging, and fragility take form. Sensitive and permeable, it constitutes a place of intimacy and of social, cultural, and affective inscription.
In this fourth edition of IN COLORS PROJECT, skin expands beyond its anatomical condition, asserting itself as matter, memory, and language. The selected works extend it into fabric, water, earth, stone, smoke, shadow, reflection, and trace. SKIN is, therefore, an invitation to wonder and fearlessness: photography affirming the freedom to touch the body and to recognize, in its extensions and metamorphoses, a presence that is simultaneously poetic and political. Each work constitutes a second skin: a surface where thought takes form, provocation becomes gesture, and beauty turns into experience.
The curatorial framework is built on the hypothesis that the photographic image constitutes a device for reconfiguring the sensible – analyzing and interpreting the real, transfigured and appropriated into autonomous, individual realities. It invites us to consider skin as a frontier, a surface of inscription, and a place of relation, where intimacy, identity, and freedom are negotiated in contemporary societies.
Curated by Sandra Maria Teixeira
IN COLORS PROJECT – a borderless initiative by Lumicroma – reclaims the relevance of photography as a sociocultural record and artistic intervention. Through the convergence of experiences reflecting on the current world and through photographic creation, it aims to annually trace the grand image of the time in which we live.
Public Award: click on the 
and vote for your favourite artwork by 23 October
Ritual of Ash and Breath
Kolkata, India, 2023
Anindya Phani | India
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.
Ritual of Ash and Breath
Kolkata, India, 2023
Anindya Phani | India
A swim in the Atlantic ocean
São Tomé, São Tomé And Príncipe, 2000
Paulo Monteiro | Portugal
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 swim in the Atlantic ocean
São Tomé, São Tomé And Príncipe, 2000
Paulo Monteiro | Portugal
A fisherman and his fish
São Tomé, São Tomé And Príncipe, 2000
Paulo Monteiro | Portugal
After returning from fishing, this fisherman posed for the photograph, showing one of the fish he had caught.
A fisherman and his fish
São Tomé, São Tomé And Príncipe, 2000
Paulo Monteiro | Portugal