Sophie Delpeux's 'Le corps-caméra' Analyzes Performance Photography

Sophie Delpeux's book 'Le corps-caméra' (Éditions Textuel) argues that photographs of happenings from the 1960s to 1980s hold equal value to the events themselves, serving as a 'presence in absentia.' The author, a lecturer at Paris I, emphasizes the power of the 'photographic gesture' in relation to the act and situates it within the era's ideology, mythologies, and revolt. The book examines works such as Chris Burden being shot in the arm (Shot, 1971), which references 1960s television news and American societal violence; Valie Export's critique of female conditioning in Birth Madonna (1976), combining classical painting and advertising; and Michel Journiac's self-representations as a woman (24 heures de la vie d'une femme ordinaire, 1974) or politician (Référendum Journiac, 1970), inspired by Barthesian mythologies. The goal is to manipulate images, even to 'manipulate oneself as an image.' Some images are considered acheiropoietic (not made by human hands), where seeing them is seeing their sacred referent (Journiac, Pane). Carolee Schneemann's nude body covered in paint, grease, ropes, chalk, and plastic in Eye Body (1963-1964) evokes an archaic mother goddess. The naked bodies of Viennese Actionists (Muehl, Nitsch, Brus, Schwarzkogler), smeared with paint or substances like entrails and blood (Nitsch), create an iconic vision of total art seeking to contaminate the world.