In a collaborative project with womenswear brand Notion of Form, Nigerian portrait and fashion photographer Lakin Ogunbanwo shot this image of Wana Udobang, a Nigerian writer, poet, journalist, filmmaker and TV personality. Ogunbanwo says the project aimed to highlight the grace and sensuality that is “reinscribed to curvaceous black and brown women by portraying the body as pure form.”

In addition to his photos, Ogunbanwo partnered with a cinematographer to create a short creative video that shows Udobang “slowly moving in space, melting in and out of these tactile forms to a mesmerizing effect,” as an audio overlay plays of her reading from one of her poems.

“The body as a form dissolves into color and texture—stretch marks and colored elbows lead to folds in flesh, tan lines, pores and irregularities made beautiful,” Ogunbanwo explains. “These defects attract attention in the same way that a scratch on an otherwise smooth surface would. They create imbalance, or markers of interest. When removing the body as subject, the eye adjusts to these moments of remarkable disruption as ones to be admired rather than dismissed. In this way, this series revises our mode of looking, feeling and perceiving beauty—beyond convention.”

Check out more Photos of the Day, and email submissions to RF’s senior editor at libby.peterson@emeraldx.com.