PhotograPhysical

Abstract

In this essay I discuss the interrelationships between modern physical culture, photography, and biopolitics by a) referring to historical discourses that highlight the nexus of photography and the material/physical world, b) pointing out the implicit photogeneity of the sculpted bodies in bodybuilding and fitness which aspire to the same characteristics formerly associated with (analog) photography, among others timelessness. Modern physical culture (fitness, bodybuilding) is here defined as one of the most significant fields for the substantiation of biopolitics insofar as it seeks to increase the capacities of the individual body and the general population not through force but rather through incentives and subtle modes of internalized control. As arguably the leading medium of the modern (liberal) nation states and as the most important medium for the proliferation of modern physical culture, photography is interpreted as the “hand of the king” in the realm of biopolitics, as it were. Not only has it contributed substantially to supplying the emerging physical culture industry with omnipresent representations of photogenic role models, but it has also helped to make modern and contemporary visual culture more “lively”. This “orientation to the living” is reinforced when the image object is a living human body in the making. Moreover, in times of digital photography, smartphone cameras have become tools for constant self-observation and self-optimization in connection with social media as exhibition spaces for the comparable body.