While she was studying in the USA, Jenny Saville became fascinated by what the female body goes through when it becomes the subject of reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. In 1994 she spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York City. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states, and transgender patients. Eager to express the violence and anesthetised pain of this experience in her own work, she collaborated with Glen Luchford, a fashion photographer who had worked for Gucci, Calvin Klein and Prada, to produce huge polaroid photographs of herself taken from below, lying on a sheet of glass.

Their artistic collaboration captures the full range of colour, tonality and topography of live flesh in large photographic tableaux. Distortions confront and coerce the viewer into an examination of their own body and the grotesqueries and beauties inherent within it. The images recall biological specimens preserved, disembodied and disfigured, questioning the whole concept of corporeality.