Necks

Necks collects in a beautifully produced volume tender portraits of more than 50 necks, all of different ages and characters, taken by Swedish photographer Thomas Wågström (born 1955). Normally in the background, in the shadow of the face--precisely not the focus of a portrait--the back of the neck here receives the camera's full attention. Smooth and wrinkled, slim and thick, freckled and unblemished, each neck as revealed in Wågström's gorgeous black-and-white photographs seems to evoke something of the body and experiences of its subject. Acclaimed writer Karl Ove Knausgård (author of My Struggle) contributes an essay about our most vulnerable yet unchangeable body part. "A neck is in time, belongs to time, but is not formed by it," writes Knausgård. "If these photos could have been taken ten thousand years ago, they would have looked the same."