Table Of ContentJOHN PULTZ
The Body and
he Lens
PHOTOGRAPHY
1839 TO
THE PRESENT
^y
7
The Body and the Lens
Photography 1839 to the Present
The Body and the Lens
Photography 1839 to the Present
John Pultz
PERSPECTIVES
HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., PUBLISHERS
—
Acknowledgements
A great number ofpeople have made this book possible and I have room to thank
personally only a few ofthem. It goes without saying that I am indebted to the
photographers, estates, galleries, and museums who provided the works illustrated in the
text. For copies ofphotographs at the Spencer Museum ofArt, I thank Robert
Hickerson, museum photographer, and Midori Oka, registration intern.
Many ofthe ideas presented here were first developed in a graduate seminar on the body
in photography that I held at the University ofKansas, spring 1994; my heartfelt thanks
to its members for listening to a work in progress and for frankly sharing their ideas.
Some oftheir insights appear here. For help at crucial points I thank Margaret Killeen,
Michael Willis, and Bobbi Rahder. Finally, for reading and commenting on the
manuscript I thankJulia Blaut and, as always, Susan Earle.
The project would not have been possible without the encouragement ofTim Barringer
and Lesley Ripley Greenfield, ofthe Perspectives series. I was fortunate to work with
Jacky Colliss Harvey, an editor who managed to provide both constant support and a
close, demanding reading ofthe text. Susan Bolsom-Morris, picture editor, was tireless in
her efforts to obtain the best illustrations for this text.
Frontispiece Clementina, LadyHawarden YoungGirlwithMirrorReflection, page42 (detail)
Series Consultant TimBarringer (TheVictoriaandAlbertMuseum)
SeriesDirector, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. EveSinaiko
EditorJacky CollissHarvey
DesignerKaren Stafford, DQP, London
CoverDesignerMikoMcGinty
PictureEditorSusanBolsom-Morris
LibraryofCongressCataloguing-in-PublicationData
Pultz,John.
Thebodyandthelens : photography 1839tothepresent/John
Pultz. —
p. cm. (Perspectives)
Includesbibliographicalreferences (p.2) andindex.
ISBN0-8109-2703-9
—
1. Photography,Artistic History. 2. Portraitphotography
History. 3. Body,Human, inart. I. Title. II. Series:
Perspectives (HarryN. Abrams, Inc.)
TR642.P85 1995
778.9*2—dc20 94-37844
Copyright© 1995CalmannandKingLtd.
Publishedin 1995byHarryN.Abrams, Incorporated, NewYork
A TimesMirrorCompany
All rightsreserved. Nopartofthecontentsofthisbookmaybe
reproducedwithoutthe written permissionofthepublisher
ThisbookwasproducedbyCalmannandKingLtd.,London
Printedandboundin Singapore
Contents
INTRODUCTION
The Body in Photography 7
ONE
The Nineteenth Century: Realism and Social Control 13
The First Photographic Portraits 13 The Spread ofPortraiture 16
Colonialism, Race, and the "Other" 20
Criminology, Psychiatry, and Human Locomotion 26 Death and War 32
TWO
1850-1918: Gender and Eroticism in Pictorialist Photography 37
Artistic Nudes and Pornography 38
The Body and the Sexuality ofChildren and Adolescents 40
Women as Photographers, Women as Subjects 46 The Exception: The Male Body 59
THREE
1900-1940: Heterosexuality and Modernism 65
American Formalism 67 Surrealism in Europe 72
Masquerade 77 Acting Out 82
FOUR
1930-1960: The Body in Society 89
The Great Depression, Class, and Liberal Politics 90
Collectivity and the Era ofthe Second World War 97
Sexual Orientation and Domesticity during the Cold War 103
FIVE 1960-1975: The Body, Photography, and Art in the Era of Vietnam 113
Political Turmoil and Social Upheaval 117
The Feminist Politics ofPerformance and Body Art 127
SIX Photography Since 1915: Gender, Politics, and the Postmodern Body 143
Documentary Photography Redefined 144 Media and the Body in a Consumer Society 150
AIDS, Gay Liberation, and the Homoerotic Body 157
Politics and Critiques ofFormalism 160
BIBLIOGRAPHY 170
PICTURE CREDITS 172
INDEX 173
;*'.-
1
5
INTRODUCTION
The
Body
in
Photography
The
emergence in recent years ofpostmodern and femi-
nist thinking demands a reappraisal ofhow the body is
represented in the visual arts. No longer a simple object
ofvisual delight and innocent erotic delectation, the body is
now understood to be the site ofa highly charged debate. New
theories insist that the representation ofthe body in the visual
arts is central to society's construction not only ofnorms ofsex-
ual behavior but ofpower relationships in general. Asking how,
and by what means, a body is represented produces more valu-
able answers than do stylistic analysis and connoisseurship.
This book examines how the human body has been repre-
sented by photography throughout the history of this most
modern ofall media in the visual arts. Photography has been the
most widespread means of visual communication of the past
century and a half, and has done more than any other medium
to shape our notions of the body in modern times. This book
investigates how photographic representations ofthe body shape
and reflect not only obvious issues ofpersonal identity, sexuality,
_
(G'erman, b. 1935) gen.de.r,..and sexual orientation but also issues ofpower, ideology,
and politics.
DieVergrasungderHande,
1979 Gelatin-silverprint 113/a Postmodern theory argues against essential definitions which
x 1 1/."(29.1 x38.9cm). assume that categories such as "male," "female," or "the body"
SanderGallery, NewYork. are understood to mean the same things in all cultures or at all
periods. These terms are historically and culturally variable. Nei-
ther the body nor photography has any set meaning, any
absolute or unchanging essence; rather the meaning ofeach is
determined by social, historical, and cultural contexts. There-
fore, the bodies discussed in this book are considered within
their separate contexts. And unlike histories ofphotography that
posit the existence ofa unified subject - photography - that is
essentially truthful, mechanical, and visual, this book considers
photography as a wide variety ofpractices that have emerged
since the medium's invention in the late 1830s.
As a critical re-examination ofphotography based in post-
modern theory, this text will in many places seem to invert cen-
ter and margin. It reconsiders photographs that are well known
and introduces less familiar ones, moving between those made as
"art" and those made as documents. In rejecting a formalist his-
tory ofart which looks at photographs in isolation, tracing
developments of style and technique, this book assumes a
methodology that is pluralistic, drawing as appropriate on ideas
from Marxism to the psychoanalytical theories ofFreud and
Lacan, and on methods taken from anthropology, literature, his-
tory, and sociology, as well as art history.
In the process ofsurveying how the body has been presented
in photography, this book will begin untangling photography
from the Modernist rhetoric that has been used to define it
throughout its history. Photography and Modernism grew up
together; as an industrial product, photography stands as a
metonym for the industrialization that defines the modern era.
GRANITELINE
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2. Richard Long
(British, b. 1945).
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Introduction
