Pennsylvania-based photographer June Yong Lee’s black-and-white composite photographs artfully take the human torso and flatten and spread it out so you can see at a glance how life marks the skin. They are occasions to consider the surface attributes that make a person a person, and they present our largest organ as a hide, reminding us that we are all just animals – and vulnerable ones at that. Lee’s photographs are striking in their ability to go from universal to personal, and from slightly creepy to sexy.
As a teen, no doubt, Lee had a profound interest in skin when he left homogenous South Korea. But his interest deepened when he arrived in the United States, a place noted for its attention to skin and the color of it. His models are strangers (Lee finds them on places like Craigslist) and remain anonymous.