Malaria Victim, New Guinea

This work is based on a photograph of a woman ravaged by malaria, which Tony Fomison found in either Time or Life magazine. He strips her of hair and colour, and enhances her melancholy with chiaroscuro – a Renaissance technique that uses strong contrasts between light and dark for dramatic effect.

Fomison identified with those marginalised by society, and often depicted people with diseases and deformities. But here, he distorts and exaggerates the woman’s grotesqu features to make his subject even more deformed and alien.

– Dr Chelsea Nichols, 2018