email:rlstrain@hotmail.co.uk
In ‘Vile Bodies: Photography and the Crisis of Looking’ Chris Townsend describes the body as ‘the limit of the human subject in space’. Both container and contained, there are many taboos concerned with opening the body and revealing the abjection that lies within. Julia Kristeva identifies in ‘Powers of Horror’ how this exposed interior becomes unstable and repulsive, highlighting our mortality and just how unreliable, fragile and out of control the human body is. The exposed inner features of the body threaten to occupy space they shouldn’t, disrupting the identity and stability of the human form, whilst evoking feelings of fear and terror.
