{"id":2150,"date":"2009-11-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2009-11-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T00:00:00","slug":"love-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/love-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Love me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to recent estimates, the soi-disant beauty industry is worth some $160 billion worldwide per year. Its prospects look good too: current research in the United States indicates that men are becoming increasingly vulnerable to its charms \u2013 apparently 38 per cent of them would like bigger pectoral muscles, (while only 34 per cent of American women want bigger breasts). Perhaps they would like to look like Ronnie Coleman as he first appears in Zed Nelson\u2019s<em> Love Me<\/em> \u2013 standing strong, oiled, and improbably wide, muscles and veins bulging. Ronnie was awarded the Mr Olympia title every year from 1998 to 2005. He appears twice in the book; the second time though, he is on his knees, an oxygen mask strapped to his face \u2013 exhausted by dehydration, a punishing dietary regime and the rigours of competitive muscle-flexing. It is a devastating reversal of that staple of the body industry \u2013 the \u201cbefore and after\u201d pictures. <em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Love Me<\/em> is the product of Nelson\u2019s wide-ranging and long-term interest in the culture, psychology and industry of body improvement. It assembles pictures taken over the best part of a decade from over 15 countries, including the US, China and the UK, and \u2013 less predictably \u2013 Haiti, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Iran. As the succession of photographs of surgeons, bodybuilders, \u201caestheticians\u201d, beauty contestants and trainee models suggests, the culture of bodily improvement is pervasive and entrenched. Besides those with a professional stake in the industry, Nelson has pictured some of its consumers: anorexics, overweight kids on fat camps, a housewife in the gym, a chest waxer, a nose jobber, and so on.<\/div>\n<div>This is not achieved without a degree of irony. Witness Nelson\u2019s juxtaposition of two portraits of a prepubescent competitor in an American beauty pageant: in the first she gazes expressionless and vacant, in the second she has adopted a schooled and utterly joyless rictus smile. Once again, the \u201cafter\u201d undermines the promised improvement of the \u201cbefore\u201d. Elsewhere the often fascinating captions and accompanying texts perform a similar function. The unmistakeable visage of Jocelyn Wildenstein (once dubbed \u201cThe Bride of Wildenstein\u201d) is accompanied by a terse quote, \u201cThe important thing is to find a good doctor.\u201d Another example \u2013 an X-ray shows how metal rods have been inserted in a patient\u2019s foot to shorten three toes. The owner explains, \u201cI like to wear Jimmy Choos, 3-inch heels with a pointy toe.\u201d<br \/>There is, though, more to<em> Love Me<\/em> than the author\u2019s wary irony. Through the mindful use of portraiture, still life, reportage and text \u2013 and through the global reach of his work \u2013 Nelson is able to allude to some of the industry\u2019s ideological underpinnings. For example, he writes that the book was motivated in part by an awareness of the way in which Western ideals of the body and beauty are successfully exported around the world. So he photographs Japanese women shopping in Tokyo\u2019s Barbie store; eyelid skin that has been removed during surgery in China to \u201cWesternise\u201d the eyes; and a Sri Lankan bodybuilder who idolizes Schwarzenegger. In Senegal he photographs the dark hands of a woman holding a portrait of herself in which her skin \u2013 and her face in particular \u2013 appear noticeably paler. Skin-lightening cream accounts for the disparity. <\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, photography itself \u2013 or more precisely, its unholy complicity with an industry geared to the control and exploitation of self-image \u2013 plays a fundamental, and questionable, role. Nelson\u2019s achievement is to use the medium against the tide, to destabilise the \u201cbefore\u201d and the \u201cafter\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guy Lane<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left;\" class=\"review_photo\" alt=\"cop_LOVE_ME_contrasto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/cop_LOVE_ME_contrasto.jpg\" height=\"187\" width=\"150\" \/>Zed Nelson<br \/>Published by Contrasto<br \/>www.contrastobooks.com<br \/>Eur35<br \/>(196pp Hardback) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Love me - FOTO8<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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