Scars can be profoundly beautiful if given the right platform. Director Matthew Donaldson and writer Jack Dyson help British photographer Sam Barker tell the story of his scars, along with narratives from his lover in the video titled "Define Beauty." The video traces the deeply scarred Barker in an effort to highlight how the wounds left behind from traumatic events can leave beautiful markings on the body.

“My leg was lying limp at a right angle halfway down the shin,” Barker narrates in the video. “The bone poked out under my trousers, then my leg swelled like a pig’s bladder — hard and shiny. They cut it open on the side of the road to stop it from ballooning.”

When Barker was 19 years old, he narrowly escaped having his leg amputated after a serious motorcycle accident, which is responsible for most of the deep scars that line his torso and leg. A scar is the body’s natural way of replacing lost or damaged skin through the healing process, according to Columbia University’s Department of Dermatology. TedxTalk educator Sarthak Sinha, describes scars as physical memories and unwanted souvenirs left on the skin.

Scar tissue is made from the same type of proteins that build normal smooth skin called collagen. After a person experiences a wound, the body creates a scab by clotting with specialized collage cells to pull the wound together tightly. There are different kinds of scars, but in Barker’s case, he has a combination of hypertrophic, atrophic, and keloid scars. Keloid scars are produced with too much collagen, so they have a bulge appearance, whereas hypertrophic scars are still raised but have a subtle and less drastic appearance. Atrophic scars are unmistakably sunken and can be caused by destroying the muscle and fat tissue beneath the skin, which is evident in Barker’s case.

“I used to get almost queasy when I’d rub cream on the deep scars so close to his bone,” his unnamed lover says. “It was almost like I’d be feeling the pain with my fingertip.”