Bodies and Photographs

The Trace
 Concepts of the body
• Naked or clothed Text

• Intimate or public view

– Exhibitionism and self-revelation
– Voyeurism and the pleasure of presenting
• Fetishised, idealised or commodified,
objectified
• Beautified or distorted
• Comforting or shocking
Titiano Vecelli: Sacred and Profane
Love (Venus and the Bride, 1514)
Michael  O’Brien at Twickenham, 1974
Privacy – Exhibition in Frankfurt
The Idealised Woman – a fake image?
Consequence: Wrong Self-Image
 Commodification
Commodity:
• An article of trace or commerce, especially as
distinguished from a service
• something of use, advantage, or value
Commodification:
• To turn sg into a commodity; make
commercial
• To treat sg as if a commodity
Commodification of the body:
• Adverts, prostitution, slavery, exhibition, etc
Commodification
Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image
of Women
Feminist documentary/video series by Jean
Kilbourne
• Killing Us Softly (1979)
• Still Killing Us Softly (1987)
• Killing Us Softly 3 (1999)
• Killing Us Softly 4 (2010) - trailer

http://www.jeankilbourne.com/videos/
 Famous photographs
• Press photography
– crises, disasters, accidents
• The body in distress
• Advertisements
– the beautified, idealised body
• The non-PC body:
– coloured
– distorted
– wounded
 Photography as Trace
• A trace, an impression, an index of the real
“not  only an image (as a painting is an image), an
interpretation of the real; it is also a trace,
something directly stenciled off the real, like a
footprint  or  a  death  mask”  (Susan  Sontag: “Image-
World”)
• Special status
its uniqueness derived from its production; a
photograph is a “material vestige of its subject”
 Traces vs Testimonies
• “a  photograph is a trace of its subject, while a
painting is testimony of it”  
• traces are “independent of belief”:  
• “a  camera  records what is in front of it, and
not what the photographer thinks is in front of
it”  (Gregory Currie)
• “photographs are like windows, mirrors, and
telescopes: aids to sight”  (Kendall Walton)
Boulevard de Temple by Louis Daguerre
(1838/39)
Famous Images
 Fire on Marlborough Street (1975)
Richard Drew – The Falling Man (9/11)
Elizabeth Eckford, 1957
The Migrant Mother, 1936
Sharbat Gula (Afghanistan), 1984
Kim Phúc – The Napalm Girl, 1972
Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch
Volcano victim, 1985, Colombia
Tiananmen Square, 1989
Southern Sudan, 1994
Oklahoma City Bombing, 1995
 Michelangelo Antonioni: Blow-up
• 1966
• Photography
• Illusion vs reality
• Personal involvement
vs a media-directed world
• Synthetic simulations
vs natural emotions
• Alienation