The body is a battlefield. Politicized, conceptualized and, increasingly, shared, our relationship with the human form is often paradoxical. Far from being a novelty, this complex relationship nevertheless takes on new dimensions, in the digital and virtualized era of the “post-industrial body”. It was a tool, it is now a building site in perpetual work for which we formulate expectations ranging from fantasy to reality, beauty to tyranny, art to trade, and curiosity to obsession, and making us dream of other bodies and other lives.
With more than 360 images from the world of art, fashion, science and vernacular photography, the book “Body” explores in 432 pages what our imagery of the human form and the ways in which these images have been used and shared can reflect our relationship to the body. The work of such artists as Nobuyoshi Araki, Bettina Rheims, Lauren Greenfield, Viviane Sassen, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Daido Moriyama, Sally Mann, Pieter Hugo and Juergen Teller, Sølve Sundsbø and Daniel Sannwald is presented, along with a text of the famous psychologist David Sander who discusses the neurological representations of our own body.
Nathalie Herschdorfer is curator and art historian specializing in the history of photography. She directs the Museum of Fine Arts of Le Locle. Among her other works are The Dictionary of Photography (2015, Editions de la Martinière) Days after: When photographers return to the scene of the drama (2011, Thames & Hudson editions), and Glossy paper: a century of photography fashion at Condé Nast (2012, Thames & Hudson editions).
Available in French (Mercator Fund), English (Thames & Hudson) and Italian (Giulio Einaudi editore).
Nathalie Herschdorfer – Body
Director of the MBAL
Panorama of contemporary photography of the human body
Mercator Fund
Thames & Hudson
Giulio Einaudi editore
