Over ten years as a professional photographer, Alessandro Castellani (Alex) has worked with artists from contemporary choreographer Russel Maliphant to Games of Thrones actress and contorsionist Pixie Le Knot, as well as covering commercial photography. His project takes a more intimate approach. Inspired by conversations with female friends, the Boston-based photographer has produced a series of portraits of women across the UK, to celebrate their body shapes, and interrogate the pressures placed upon them by our society to adhere to dominant beauty standards. Women in the UK undergo around 25,000 cosmetic surgery procedures every year, according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), the most common of which is breast enlargement, with around 7,000 operations carried out yearly. It’s a trend that can be traced back to the early 2000s, when reality TV stars, glamour models and popstars such as Victoria Beckham super-enhanced their slim physiques with large breast implants, and although the popularity of that supersized look has waned in recent years , the pressure on women to have so-called ‘perfect’ breasts, remains. In his portraiture series Natural Beauty, Alex confronts the idea that women should have to change their looks to feel attractive. Each woman in the series shows herself at her most natural; wearing little to no makeup, her clothes simple and loose-fitting. Each woman faces the camera directly, in a sign of confidence, or perhaps provocation towards the viewer, telling them, “I love my body as it is”.