Feeling the burn: Thomas Mailaender's illustrated people

We’ve heard about suffering for your art, but this takes things to a new level. French artist Thomas Mailaender applied 23 photographic negatives to models skin, searing them with a UV lamp. The result? Some really beautiful effects, that conjure up images of ephemerality, memory and multiple applications of aloe vera. All the images have been complied into the book Illustrated People. Over 128 pages, Mailaender puts his performative work into static form. Capturing forever images that would have disappeared just moments before exposure to daylight.

What lends this project depth is that the images come from the Archive of Modern Conflict’s collection. Established in the early 1990s, the archive collects material relating to the history of war. Their collection has been published into many award-winning books, but this is the first time the collection has been viewed on a human canvas. The sunburnt skin brings a new dimension to these pictures, appropriating found images of war-time into a new narrative.

It’s not the first time the body has been used as a canvas, Janine Rewell has even used a similar technique as Mailaender, tanning her model’s body with stickers covering certain spots. The result is a fun ‘temporary tattoo’ effect that uses playful, graphic shapes that bloom over the skin. Her style is all about the pure vector line and decorative shapes, showing how illustration can escape the page. Rewell’s work is playful, the sunburn becomes part of the model’s aesthetic – whereas Mailaender’s work retains some of the poignancy and pathos that is in keeping the original source material.

What both these projects show is how by placing the body into the design process, the message of the work takes on a new dimension. For Mailaender, we are being asked to think about the photograph as an object, how a moment cemented in time is a passing moment for the subject. Design choices still reign, as black and white originals are interspersed with the hot-red skin, but there is an opportunity to reflect deeper. With Rewell, the body is for decoration and experimentation. Although we noticed in both cases they use models for the actual sunburning. Well played.

Janine Rewell:


Thomas Mailaender: