BJP 7924 / BODY TALK

"In Body Talk, the latest issue of British Journal of Photography, we explore how images of the body – particularly those that depict love, desire, and obsession – challenge what Martin Jay called the “disinterested gaze”. The answers, like love itself, are never simple. Diego Moreno’s deeply personal portraits merge sacred imagery with erotic encounters, seeking reconciliation between body and soul while archivist Stefan Dickers reconsiders pornography and kink as social history. Hoda Afshar traces fixation through a colonial archive; Andi Galdí Vinkó exposes what science omits from its depiction of the body; and Mark Sealy envisions a liberatory photographic future that resists the violence of observation. But artists Alba Zari and Amandine Kuhlmann reflect on the objectification embedded even in self-representation. Body Talk also features our regular Agenda, Projects, and Intelligence sections. Highlights include the first Italian exhibition dedicated to the HIV-AIDS crisis (1982–96), Alejandro Cartagena’s major retrospective at SFMoMA, and the V&A Photography Centre’s first complete rehang. Plus, insights from Joumana El Zein Khoury, Executive Director of World Press Photo, and a spotlight on Takuma Nakahira’s radical photo theory."