With war photographs confronting us daily, do we need an exhibition to
remind us of the body's vulnerability? But the havoc caused by war is
only one aspect of it. There is disease, domestic violence,
environmental pollution, the enfeeblement of old age, starvation, drug
addiction and more - much more. It's a gloomy picture and "The Body at
Risk: Photography of Disorder, Illness and Healing" at the
International Center of Photography is not for the squeamish. But the
show is not all downbeat.
"The Body at Risk" is a collaboration between the photography
center and the Milbank Memorial Fund, a New York-based foundation that
since 1905 has sought to improve public health through research and
advocacy. The show was assembled by Carol Squiers, a curator at the
center, from the work of 16 documentary photographers, among them Lewis
Hine, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, Donna Ferrato, Sebastião Salgado
and Marion Post Wolcott. Ms. Squiers has also written a substantial
catalog.
The show takes in a lot of pictorial territory, from
the now-familiar shots of maltreated child laborers by Hine, the early
20th-century reformer, to victims of the AIDS rampage in Africa by the
South African photographer Gideon Mendel. A section on the Farm
Security Administration, a New Deal health initiative from the
mid-1930's to the early 1940's, details the plight of tenant farmers
and migrant laborers during the Depression, and some of the federal
programs assisting them. Environmental pollution is addressed by David
Hanson, whose photographs of affected sites, and their monitoring by
the Environmental Protection Agency, come with maps and written
descriptions.
One of the sections that is most painful in its
immediacy - and the only one in color - presents images from Lori
Grinker's long-running project about war veterans. Addressing the
lasting effects of war on the surviving wounded, it doesn't stint in
its depiction of maimed bodies. A 2003 photograph of a 28-year-old
Marine, Sgt. Jose Torres, who was wounded in Iraq by both enemy and
friendly fire, shows him aboard a hospital ship, being prepped for his
ninth operation. [...]
"The Body at
Risk" is a show where straightforward, documentary photography serves
its subjects best. But art sometimes creeps into journalism (and vice
versa). Among the examples are Smith's shots of Maude Callen when he
used his favorite device of making dark, shadowy pictures subtly
illuminated by light. In another key are Eugene Richards' raw,
chilling emergency room scenes, which include a devastating view of a
woman's body abandoned on a table after surgeons failed to revive her
bullet-riddled heart.
The show's most poignant shot was made in
2000 by Mr. Mendel. It shows a Tanzanian mother, Dorika Gabriel, as she
lovingly carries the skeletal body of her 30-year-old son, Joseph,
dying of AIDS, to a spot outside their hovel where he can sit in the
shade.
"The Body
at Risk: Photography of Disorder, Illness and Healing" is on view at
the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas,
at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, through Feb. 26.
Image courtesy NetworkPhotographers.com
via NYTimes:
Photography Review | 'The Body at Risk'
Picturing Some Shocks That Flesh Is Heir To [excerpts]
By GRACE GLUECK
Published: December 26, 2005