Brooklyn-based photographer Ariana Page Russell has dermatographia, a skin condition that leaves her hypersensitive to touch, enabling her to lightly scratch her flesh to create raised welts in deliberate, elegant patterns. 

Russell’s mesmerizing images serve in part to catalog the invisible and nonverbal powers of the body. First as scratches and then as photographic evidence. 

The skin as a temporary canvas.

© Ariana Page Russell