Read with Us #12: Body-ody-ody
07 am – 07 pm, 12 May – 30 June 2025
Sóng Sánh Café
48 Ngọc Hà, Hà Nội
From the organizer:
The body has long been a battleground as much as a subject in visual culture. In an attempt to uncover broader structures of representation and gendered ways of seeing, critic John Berger dissected the tradition of the nude in European painting and beyond: “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” For centuries, the body, particularly the female body, has been painted, sculpted, photographed, objectified through the male gaze, tamed by bourgeois, heteronormative sensibilities.
What is categorized as art nude photography typically involves the capitalization of a young body. In this transactional encounter, flesh becomes currency, the naked body framed through both formal and moral lenses. Arty lighting serves not only to obscure so-called sensitive parts but also to elevate the final output as art, not porn. Cutting through the anxieties about decency that are so often attached to nudity, Body-ody-ody is a selection of eight photographic works that respond to the question: What happens when the body fights back?
List of works:
Ren Hang (2016) – Dian Hanson
Dark Room (2022) – Phyllis Christopher
Para Para : Maria – Toshihisa (2009) – Ryudai Takano
Coco (2019) – Olivier Fatton
Photographs from Storyville (1996) – E.J. Bellocq / Lee Friedlander
5 Dollars for 3 Minutes (2021) – Cammie Toloui
Nguyễn Công Án, Mr. Universe 1955 – author unknown
Soviet Gymnastic Stars (1979) – Vladimir Golubev
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