Surface Tension
Our skin—this dense yet elastic epithelial tissue—encloses our inner reality like a resilient protective sheath. It conceals benevolently, covers protectively, absorbs tension. Under intense physical impact it deforms; under pressure it tightens; its surface is in a constant cycle of abrasion and regeneration. It is a closed sheath, a defensive membrane that we cannot tear open by relying on the supple surface of our own body—also entirely covered in epithelium—but only with the aid of the rough, sharp objects of the external world. A shard of broken glass slices it open; a coarse stone wall scrapes it raw; a forgotten iron hook mangles it. Evolution has left homo sapiens with a single brutal instrument capable of piercing the elastic protective surface of both prey and kin alike: the calcium-rich thirty-second tooth, coated in hard enamel—the dentition. For however perfectly the thick, elastic skin protects us against everyday contact (when a hand grips a wrist, when the edge of underwear presses into the skin of the buttocks), from time to time—once in a hundred—it still ruptures.
Injury, wound, fissure.
Ultimately, this rupture is the primal experience itself: the bloody act of birth, as the sac surrounding the foetus splits open, as life—hesitantly smiling from beyond a dim boundary—dismantles the opalescent membrane that borders ordinary reality. For years, Zoltán Tombor has been examining this semi-translucent membrane through various series, knowingly or not. In a sense, this too is a birth, a rebirth: the moment in which the New York–based, internationally successful fashion photographer claims for himself the autonomous realm of art photography. Tombor touches membranes and cuts through membranes—but not as an agent; rather, as an observer. The countless synthetic skins produced by civilisation—be they faux-leather upholstery, a sock heel, a rubber boot, or a waterproof overall—offer protection only temporarily; tension inevitably attacks the surface: it wears, splits, tears, and breaks. And Tombor stands there patiently with his camera, documenting both the existence and the absence of the protective sheath. Somewhere halfway between everyday metaphor and studio-constructed reality.
