The Anatomy of a Chicken 1939

This is Frederick Sommer's *The Anatomy of a Chicken*, a gelatin silver print. Sommer takes what is discarded, the innards of a chicken, and makes them strangely beautiful. Look at the top third of the image, to the large, bulbous form, and see the strange, spiky protuberance, and how the light catches the moistness of the flesh. These tones and textures are echoed in the head of the chicken below, with its vacant stare and strangely compelling presence. This is a photograph but Sommer has a sculptor's sensibility, arranging forms with an eye to both their material qualities and their symbolic potential. He transforms the mundane into something arresting, almost surreal. Sommer's work makes me think of artists like Man Ray or even some of the more unsettling still lives of Giorgio Morandi, who found the extraordinary in the everyday. It is a reminder that art can be found in the most unexpected places. It is a process of looking closely, and a reminder to question our assumptions about what is beautiful, what is repulsive, and what is art.