Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 4: Photography and the human body , 4th ed, 2009

Wikipedia: 19th cent. post-mortem photography

The Subject as Object:  Photography and the human body

Michelle Henning - lecturer in Dept of Culture, Media, and Drama at University of the West of England, Bristol

The author begins by noting the academic interest in the 80s and 90s in photographic perceptions and portrayals of the body (to which she has presumably contributed).  Among the issues of concern were gender, ageing, race, and sexuality, and the role of photography in the generation of desire.  Emergence of these concerns was tied to political issues of the same categories.  By the 21st century concern had turned to designer genetics, cloning, posthuman cyborgs and the translation of the body into data.

Cites Carol Vance’s “The Pleasures of Looking” [found, but not yet read] as important in describing the connection between ideas of the body and ideas about how how photographs are used, basically as a means of controlling identity and defining acceptable practices.

The chapter is organized thematically rather than chronologically

Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 7: The Body in Photography, 1997

 Muybridge - Woman turning in surprise, running away

Where the portrait is ambiguous, Clarke finds the nude contentious.  This is, he says, because much of the way bodies are viewed is based on social construct.  This doesn't seem to say very much since very little of what we view or know is not understood through social construct.  His point seems to be that ideas of sexuality, identity and gender influence how nude bodies are photographically portrayed.