Fire the photograph into glazed porcelain, then imagine the piece was dropped and put back together by a restorer working in gold lacquer. The sitter is a china figure: skin as pale glaze with a faint celadon tint, clothes as overglaze enamel that still matches the original outfit, hair as painted porcelain with a little raised slip for the masses. The face is still their face.
Gold seams cross the figure and continue into the background. They follow breakage, not anatomy — a crack may run through a cheek and into a wall. The environment is porcelain too: walls, floor, and props as one kiln-fired scene, with crazing in the glaze and a slightly thick foot implied at the bottom of the object.
Show it in a museum vitrine: cool, even light, a faint reflection on the glaze, no dramatic chiaroscuro.
This is not broken glass, not gold jewellery on a living person, and not a photograph with gold doodles on top.
