In both J. G. Ballard's book Crash and David Cronenberg's film adaptation, we got a glimpse of a kind of posthuman fetishism: the erotic conjunction of flesh and machine. French painter and photographer Romain Slocombe goes past this action-oriented vision in his book City of the Broken Dolls. Imagine The Journal of Trauma merged with Penthouse. Most of the photos were taken in medical clinics and feature images of attractive young Japanese women bandaged or in traction after suffering faux accidents.
Slocombe is artist enough not to be at the mercy of his obsessions, but to use them to great effect. In his work, advertising images and porn are parodied in a medical context, revealing the delicate constructs of human tissue and bone that underpin them all. There's something savage in these false trauma documents, but there's compassion, too – even if it's a mechanically engineered pathos.
City of the Broken Dolls, by Romain Slocombe: US$17.95. Creation Books UK: +44 (0171) 430 9878.
This article originally appeared in the November issue of Wired magazine.
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