The 'Body Language' index is a concordant collection of photographic work curated from the Graduate Photography Online archive. Art Historian, Curator & Critic John Pultz introduces the collection and picks some of his personal highlights from the work included. Browse the Body Language Index ▸
John Pultz
Art Historian, Curator & Critic
Examining 500 works by sixty photographers over the past two decades, indexed by Source under 'Body Language', reveals the profound changes in photography since my initial exploration of this theme in The Body and Photography (1995). This earlier work adopted a Foucauldian perspective, investigating the power dynamics inherent in photographic representations of the human body. While some photographers—particularly surrealists from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as postmodernists from the 1980s and 1990s — self-consciously addressed the intersection of body and language in their works, the majority did not. For those who did not engage directly with this intersection, I interpreted their work linguistically to illuminate the power relationships between photographers and their subjects, as well as among the subjects themselves.
In a change from 1995 and earlier, the photographers from the last 20 years featured in this collection have embraced the linguistic turn associated with anti-formalist postmodernism. Consequently, their photographs trace onto the body the complex social pressures and personal issues prevalent in contemporary life. Many of these artists connect their photographs to themes of gender politics, such as the female gaze, the male gaze, body positivity, female empowerment, and heteronormativity. Others utilize the human body to explore topics related to physical health and mental well-being, addressing issues such as anxiety, deafness, menstruation, skin moles, epilepsy, chronic pain, abortion, self-healing, familial relationships, and the loss of a parent.
Language informs the work of these contemporary photographers, not just in the pictures but also in their statements that accompany the portfolios. Habitually, I tend to overlook photographers’ statements, mistakenly adhering to the outdated notion that successful photographs should stand on their own independently of text. My first time through the 'Body Language' archive, I skipped the statements and mostly missed what the photographers aimed to do. But when I went back and revised the portfolios alongside their accompanying statements, my understanding shifted significantly.
All of the works I encountered were of exceptional quality. This should come as no surprise, as they had already undergone a rigorous selection process. Rather, I chose to focus on how effectively the photographers matched their images to their written statements. Were the photographs visually and conceptually aligned with the intentions articulated in their statements? Furthermore, did the visual aspects transcend the verbal components, reaching into the realm of the ineffable? With these questions in mind, I endeavored to identify exemplary portfolios that demonstrated a remarkable synergy between imagery and textual intent—a task akin to Hercules’ labors. Additionally, I favored works that challenge conventional representations of the body, particularly those that eschew the portrayal of the female form in the context of nudity. Here, I present six portfolios that stood out to me as models of artistic achievement, along with my reflections on why each resonated so profoundly:
Selector's Comment: Leanne Davies is the sole artist in this selection who employs mixed media, integrating photography, painting, archival images, and yarn. She uses this fusion of media to suggest the joy and suffering inherent in human connections and their absence. For Davis, the intervention of these other media helps her to make bodies become the locus of physical and psychological tensions and pleasures as they are simultaneously ripped asunder and stitched together.
Selector's Comment: Among the six portfolios I have chosen, Goldblatt’s works are perhaps the most traditional, centering on the unclothed human form. However, rather than conforming to the genre of “the nude,” Goldblatt’s photographs conceal rather than reveal flesh. The deliberate blurring in her images recalls the motion studies of the nineteenth century by Eakins, Muybridge, and Marey, yet Goldblatt’s work diverges from their scientific pursuits. In his statement, he cites philosopher Vilém Flusser, who posits that a photographer in a photographic society must challenge the conventions of the medium. Goldblatt appears to argue that if photography is a technological means of hyperrealism, he’ll instead take an antithetical approach, rendering bodies nearly invisible, their shapes becoming ethereal and ghostly.
Selector's Comment: As a gay male navigating a heteronormative society, Max Lee reflects on the necessity of concealing his identity, ultimately finding solace in photography as a medium for exploring the nuances of his existence. Distinct from pornography or other desire-centric imagery, Lee stages scenes that involve both the desirer and the desired. This dyadic representation is a rarity in visual culture, which unusually shows only the object of desire. Through this shift in perspective, Lee subtly addresses themes of gender identity and sexuality in a largely chaste manner. His statement reveals an exploration of “subtle nuances” between “dreams and reality,” suggesting a tender, almost innocent engagement with his sexuality. For Lee, photography offers a safe space for performing and realizing his desires, allowing him to construct a haven for self-exploration. What distinguishes his work is the objective documentary stance he adopts. Unlike many photographers or performance artists who overtly express their identities through their bodies, Lee assumes both the roles of subject and photographer, creating a safe space where he can navigate his identity without succumbing to overt sexualization.
Selector's Comment: Shalom Nuhu, who has been deaf since birth, circumvents addressing the body as something sexual or gendered, while using photography in ways that avoid any claim it once had for verisimilitude. Rather, before the camera she stages the gestures of British Sign Language, plus a couple of facial views, to address the deaf body that needs to sign to be understood. This sense of performance and performativity in her work she shares with Lee, Winbow, and Zahania: in each case, by interposing performativity as a layer between the camera and its literal subject, the photograph sidesteps any claims for truthfulness attributed to the camera and the process of photography. Because such claims can be easily challenged and debunked, to work using the phantasmal potentiality of the medium gives the photographer, ironically, a more stable starting point: avoiding claims of medium-derived veracity foregrounds the photographers’ artistry.
Selector's Comment: For Jack Winbow, the body is a cipher-like armature upon which and through which he explores the construction of gender. A queer person who was assigned male at birth, Jack Winbow critiques heteronormativity by adopting hypersexualized poses typically assigned to women in visual media. Perhaps echoing Judith Butler’s notions of gender as performance, Winbow uses in his photographs props and costumes, as well as “traditional hyper-sexualised poses” in which “women are portrayed within visual media,” he writes. The anonymity of actual personhood hidden behind all this is suggested by the way the face is obscured in each of the images.
Selector's Comment: Lilian Zahania offers yet another perspective on the body that is neither nude nor sexualized, nor strictly abstract. Instead, she photographs subjects who embody their chronic pain, layering their experiences with performance. This approach liberates Zahania’s images from the expectation of being literal documentation of pain, adding a layer of sophistication reminiscent of Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities series, of the 1980s, which captures the awkward movements of individuals navigating urban angst amidst physical threats.