In the series Undergarments and Armor, Tanya Marcuse photographed historical garments worn by men and women that are now housed in the collections of museums and archives in the United States and England. Once animated by the individuals who inhabited them, these items, worn close to the body and in some cases even molded to it, are here rendered lifeless, emphasizing the body’s absence. Marcuse highlights the polarities between masculine and feminine, hard and soft, exposed and concealed, and then collapses them, revealing, for example, the similarities between the taut laces of a bodice and the rigid interlocking rings of chain mail. The small format of her platinum-palladium prints, a medium characterized by delicate tones, creates an intimate viewing experience, in which the photographs become memento mori—reminders of mortality and the passage of time.