O is an ambitious new book by Dominican-American artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Using a cast of different bodies, ages, backgrounds and identities, Rodriguez sculpts a series of studio nudes oscillating between power and a loss of control. O is published by Loose Joints. All photographs: Luis Alberto Rodriguez

Luis Alberto Rodriguez writes: ‘The thickest fog has engulfed us. Hopelessness and despair have taken hold as we attempt to hold on to the familiar’

Luis Alberto Rodriguez trained as a dancer at the Juilliard School, performing worldwide for 15 years before turning to photography. Now, he continues to study the human form’s movement, often using his subject’s body sculpturally and abstractly

Rodriguez frames his striking nudes in dialogue with images of tasseography – the practice of divination through coffee-cup reading that runs through Rodriguez’s Dominican heritage – to spiritually engage with the force and beauty of those who appear, and disappear, before his camera

Luis Alberto Rodriguez: ‘My mother was renowned for tasseography. In preparation for a reading, the cups must be turned upside down after drinking. Gravity does its work, dragging the left-over liquid to the cup’s rim. A map remains for those looking for a sign – unpredictable pathways leaving behind their traces of existence. My mother has attained eminence for her divination abilities. Her readings were, and continue to be, a mystery to me. I’ve seen how others admire her clarity, gift and certainty. They’re comforted when filled with anxiety, and warned when clouds will shade their days’

Also influenced by French philosopher Simone Weil, Rodriguez draws a line between his portraits and Weil’s mystic thought, in search of purity and the relationship between suffering and transcendence

The title of the book – the letter O – speaks to this transcendence: between a noise, a gasp, an exhale, a cycle, all sounds, an open symbol, a zero, a reset

Rodriguez challenges his subjects to let go: bodies contort and collapse while returning to poise, lifting to grace and reaching into purity

How much control do we have over the direction we are headed? How soft is the landing?

O evokes the volatility of our current moment, our states of self-preservation, and the future that is yet to come

Luis Alberto Rodriguez: ‘How do we not harden? The ground feels unsteady. Will the earth be there to receive us? What about gravity? Do we surrender? How much tension do we create in resisting its force? What if it was possible to stop time abruptly during a free fall? And what if, during this clamorous wreck, in vertical descent, we could recalibrate momentum and change the course of our trajectory? Do we have the will? Is calamity a destination? Are we lost?’

Luis Alberto Rodriguez: ‘After two and a half years of wading in a pool of curiosity, wrestling with these questions, I’ve accepted an endless cycle of uncertainty: an inner scream. The people on these pages are negotiating corporeally this sound of perseverance and resignation. They are collapsing bodies. Overpowering energy from the outside has shifted their understanding of space. They are transformed containers who, while searching for clarity, became physically unrecognisable to themselves – surrendered souls who have chosen total presence as their compass. Can you hear them?