In his new book Illustrated People , French artist Thomas Mailaender decorates his models’ bodies not with ink or paint, but UV rays. Mailaender recreated 23 images from the Archive of Modern Conflict, a London-based store of artifacts from 19th- and 20th-century wars, by strategically “sunburning” the subjects, temporarily — and painfully — imprinting the photographs on their skin. Mailaender’s series thus serves as a testament to the simultaneously searing and fleeting nature of difficult memories; the UV burns hurt, but they’ll also disappear over time. Click through to see more of Mailaender’s work, which we discovered via DesignTAXI.
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender
Photo credit: Thomas Mailaender