The Body in Photography

Abstract

This chapter attempts to speak about the body as a creative agent of the manifestation of images led by the unconscious. The body is represented by its image. The issues of “limits” and “gender” are related to photography. An Image is the limits of a being in the world. Limits stand for the death of the “real thing.” Representations of bodies in the works of five photographers are discussed. They try to define gender by manifesting forms that challenge the limits of corporeal appearances. These bodies become corridors that lead to meetings with the horror of the “real thing.” Gender is lost in the forest of meanings: gender does not exist; it is meant, it is rendered as a word, it acts as meaning while suppressing the biological body's loss and its disguise within a signifier. The photographic image that promises reality's capture is rather a visual bandage for what cannot be said, what is compromised in order to be rendered as image.