Body: The Photobook

The definitive survey of contemporary photography of the human body

The body remains a battleground. Politicized, conceptualized and increasingly shared, our often-paradoxical relationship with the human form is nothing new, but finds itself heightened in the digitised, virtualised era of the ‘post-industrial’ body. No longer a tool but a work-in-progress, our bodily expectations bound from fantasy to reality, beauty to tyranny, art to commerce and curiosity to obsession, leaving us dreaming of other bodies and alternate lives.

Surveying a range of over 360 photographic re-presentations from the worlds of art, fashion, scientific and vernacular photography – including the work of Nobuyoshi Araki, Bettina Rheims, Lauren Greenfield, Viviane Sassen, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Daido Moriyama, Sally Mann, Pieter Hugo, Juergen Teller, Sølve Sundsbø and Daniel Sannwald – Body explores what our imaging of the human form, and the ways in which those images have been used and shared, might reflect of our relationship to the body. Supporting the broad range of photography is an essay by the psychologist Professor David Sander, Ph.D., discussing the neurological representation of our own bodies

About the Author:

Nathalie Herschdorfer is an author and curator specialised in photography. She is the director of the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle, Switzerland, and a curator with FEP (Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography). She has written a number of books amongst which are Afterwards, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Photography, Coming into Fashion and reGeneration, all published by Thames & Hudson.

Contents List:

Introduction • 1. Physique • 2. Alter Ego • 3. Essay • 4. Constructions • 5. Mutations • 6. Celebration • 7. Essay • 8. Flesh • 9. Love