A Body Painted in White

All images © 2025 Pau Marchant

The text in this blog was originally different. I wasn’t sure if I should change it, but I decided to blend both versions — each holds something true about this session.

I was writing about suffering — about how sticky it is, and how, even years after the pain has passed, something remains. The sadness, the silence — it stays.

In the moment of the photography, I wanted to be someone else. Geisha-like. Beautiful, controlled, soft.

But something else came through — a kind of animal. Raw, emotional, filled with grief.

I found my old photography notebook — the one where my ideas always begin.
These photos came from there.

They were inspired by Butoh, the Japanese dance.
A dark ballet. I had been reading about it for days before the shoot.

Bodies painted white.
A performance of the unspeakable — grief, death, transformation.

I started like a geisha.
A beautiful face, controlled.

But something happened — and Butoh came in with a question:

Aren’t we always walking toward death, from the moment of birth?

Butoh — and many other traditions — hold that question.
And so do these photographs.

They were born from that place.
where light and darkness meet.
Where beauty is not polished, but broken open.

My reality was I have darkness and it needed a way out.

Where the body becomes the answer to something language can’t explain.
The journey starts in the body.

Intuition speaks in the moment, in spontaneity.
When we are creating art, something comes through — something that can’t be controlled.
That is the art.

All images © 2025 Pau Marchant. Do not reproduce without permission.