A haunting and visceral gelatin silver print by Frederick Sommer, *Placenta* confronts the viewer with an unflinching close-up of organic matter that blurs the boundary between the beautiful and the abject. Sommer's masterful command of photographic tone and texture transforms the biological subject into an almost abstract meditation on life, mortality, and the raw materiality of existence. Mounted with precision, the work exemplifies Sommer's surrealist sensibility and his lifelong fascination with found objects and the overlooked fragments of the natural world.