Working in an expanded field of photography, Darren Tanny Tan’s practice at once examines and betrays notions of the body and its representations. Central to his approach are unorthodox image-making processes through which destructive impulses are sublimated and expressed in the rupturing of surfaces. In this series of images, Tanny Tan adopts what can be described as a ‘Sadean fascination’ with the body as anchorage to the psychical and its vulnerability to suffering. Employing a haptic manipulation of photographic material, he defaces his subjects and renders them into phantasmagoric figures that revel in dread and desire. Tanny Tan holds a Bachelor of Design (RMIT), a Bachelor of Photography (Photography Studies College), and is currently undertaking a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.