Author Description

The Century of the Body presents chronologically one hundred works that illustrate all the significant genres of body-centred photography, in both art and science. Dance, sport, fashion, glamour, anatomy, medicine, criminology, political propaganda, erotic imagery, Body Art, and all the varied currents of what is called 'art photography' are featured, each represented by the most innovative photographers of their day. The greats of scientific and technological imagemaking, notably Lennart Nilsson and Ralph T. Hutchings, are included. So, too, are the leading art photographers of the century, among them Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Brassai, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Bill Brandt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Richard Avedon and Joel-Peter Witkin. Well known Body Artists, such as Claude Cahun, Carolee Schneemann and Chris Burden, who used the camera to record the performances, are also acknowledged. The Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, one of the world's foremost photography museums, has selected these landmark images to celebrate some of modern photography's finest achievements. An introduction by William A. Ewing, and full commentaries on every photograph, survey the entire range of twentieth-century imagery, focusing on the radical shifts in attitudes to the body that have taken place since 1900. The images, magnificently reproduced in duotone and colour, stand as a lasting memorial to the finest photographic artists and scientists of the past one hundred years.--Jacket.