LET'S get it straight: William A. Ewing is not a photographer. He is a collector. In fact, the photo historian has no desire to snap pictures. Honest.
In an amiable voice heard over the phone from London, the Canadian states his purpose: 'I'd rather collect images.' If you give his new book, The Body: Photoworks of the Human Form (Thames and Hudson, London, $288) some time, Ewing will change the way you look at yours in the bathroom mirror.
Trust me.
The collection of 366 illustrations push the mind. Fragments are captured stunningly: a rib cage that looks like an ivory sculpture. A belly-button, so complicated, you want a users-manual to untangle it. That halo of fine hair around the nipple? In one close-up, it looks absolutely menacing. In one silver print of dark, well-oiled skin, the symmetry of the collarbone and larynx is sheer architecture.
He combed 15 decades of photography to find how 200 photographers regarded the body. Deftly organised in a dozen chapters, the photos fall under headings such as Mind, Mirror, Idols, Prowess, Eros.
'People never think of the human body as fragments. I want them to look at the image with another set of eyes.' The Body delivers. Some photos are cadaver-cold; others, steamy, even wet. A menage-a-trois from the 30s would merit a brown wrapper in small town America. A crucifixion of a 25-year-old and starving Indians in Madras, both from the late 1800s, send chills.
