Fred Rambaud and Benjamin Donadieu have contributed four dramatic stills from their short film Lea for Haider Ackermann’s A#3. ‘Lea’ writhes naked on the studio floor, captured in a fit of pain, or is it ecstacy?

The studio images are accompanied by this simple phrase by the late French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry:

“La peau est ce qu’il y a de plus profond en l’homme”

Roughly translated, “the skin is that which is the deepest of man.”

For Rambaud and Donadieu, it resonates with the exposed and nubile vision of raw emotion in their images, yet knowing Valéry, this is soaked in cynicism, suggesting that mankind’s intensity is but skin deep.