The body as an aesthetic object

by Joe Light

Sam Taylor-Wood’s book - Contact - combines the body as a beautiful form mixed with images of disturbia. Using strong colours, particularly reds and blacks she objectifies her characters, presenting them as a contact sheet. This creates feelings of uneasiness with edgy compositions. As it is presented as contact sheets it seems to be unfinished. As a result this seems to offer the viewer a secretive look into the personal lives of the people photographed. They seem to be no more than objects trapped by the frames of the black contact sheet borders. In a way Taylor-Wood asks the question, what is beautiful? and tries to emphasise imperfect humanistic aesthetics rather than beautiful forms. This makes the subjects seem vulnerable as if they are objects being controlled.

Cindy Sherman, Photograohic work 1975-1995 - “Often, her photos present images of women who have dedicated themselves to the cliches of the fashion world and advertising. - Elisabeth Bronfen. I think this quote best sums up Sherman’s work. Using models shot in this style takes their esthetical beauty away, humanising them rather than recording them in compositions which grow more and more gruesome throughout. However, because we are told they are models, some viewers may still see the women photographed as objects of beauty. This adds a disturbing contrast to the book and i like how the photographer is challenging conformist views of the way people should look and be viewed.

Alex Kayser’s extensive archive of photographs entitled “Heads” looks deeply at the aesthetics of what must be hundreds of mens faces. The book is a great record of differences in face and is not a new idea. The way that victorian physiognomy looks into facial shape to determine a persons personality is made to seem absurd because under the images it tells you the persons name and occupation. Every man photographed is either naturally bald or shaves their head daily, this small insight shows what men sometimes do to be how they want to look and want to be seen.