Bodies and boundaries

What often strikes me about human beings and their bodies is how readily they look to deny them. In many contemporary societies, much about our bodily-ness is treated as taboo: sex, menstruation, sickness, death — even mortality itself. We deal with matters of the body in hushed tones: protected by bedroom doors, bathroom cubicles, or doctors' consultation rooms. We bind the body in a set of codes about what is 'normal', 'desirable' or 'moral'. It is often through, and upon, people's bodies that 'social order' is policed and enforced. It is one of the world's great markers of inequality: that the more privilege we acquire, the more privacy is granted to us, and the more power we seem to gain over our bodies, their expression, and their wellbeing.

Tina Modotti – Italian Photographer