Cracking open the body, peeling back a layer and exposing the vulnerabilities that lie latent beneath all surfaces are the concerns that traverse the width and breadth of artist Matthew Day Jackson’s work. Central to Jackson’s practice are both the concept that disintegration always precedes disappearance, and the artist’s irreconcilable desire to walk through death’s unknowable corridors. In a series of works that ape both the popular traveling exhibition “Bodies” and the conventions of historical portraiture, Jackson presents us with images that jointly confront history and our own inevitable futures.

This portfolio originally appeared in Document’s Fall/Winter 2013 issue.