I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge?
Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel
The bodybuilder’s skin, drawn taught over a landscape of muscle, presents itself as an impenetrable surface. A solid statement, more stone than flesh. Even the plastic torsos of the competition’s trophies seem more likely to be shaken by breath than the bodies they reward. There is something unquestionable, simple even, in such substantial force exacting its presence. It concentrates and demands acknowledgment. It asks for a particular way of seeing (the attunement of eyes in a Life Drawing class), where the human in his environment is refigured as a pattern of surfaces and angles, illuminations and shadings. There is a sense of gravity to the spectacle of such bodies on display, as though the short circuit of worshipping the very body that worships, generates a real model for anthropocentrism. All eyes turn about the idea of Man as Body, and the camera turns about it too, exhibiting the figurine from all angles at once.
The photographic close-up makes particular sense here. It destabilizes a sense of scale and proportion in a way that aesthetically meets the psychology of bodybuilding. That is, this striving for a hypertrophic body finds its quick fix in the localized focus of a zoomed lens, where veins and muscles appear in expanded detail. The series documents an externalised Will to power in such a way that furthers its realization. Under the lens, these bodies become limitless with potentiality: the forces of gravity or size are overturned. A man doing press-ups on the floor could also be a Kafkaesque creature stuck to the wall, or a close-up of a chest and arm could be the geography of an entire region. Subject matter and medium establish some close and unusual collaboration in this work.
Rosa van Hensbergen
