As a sculptor, Gormley (born 1950) has as his starting-point the human body, usually his own. Many of his lead and concrete figures begin as casts of his own body. In 1990 he began working on a print project at the Hope Sufferance Studios, experimenting with different techniques. Noticing his thumbprints smudging the edges of some soft-ground etching plates, he was inspired to dispense with the etching needle and make marks on the plates using various parts of his own body. The result was a portfolio of nine prints entitled Body and Soul, which includes this image of the artist's splayed fingerprints in black on a white background.