Week 9 : Fitness

Image of the week

These are the photos i've been seeing around on social media and the topic i chose for this week is fitness. According to some of the captions those are fitness (progress) images. As you may have observed these images are taken using smart phones and are all selfies. I want to compare how's it like in the past because i'm sure these days people jolly well know what they want to enhance/train when they hit the gym, just like these girls i'm sure they put in much effort to train their glutes so they can look shapely in everything. Self love also pretty much says it all in these images above because you want to look good to feel good, so for me when i see these images they are motivating to look at but for some people they sexualise them.

However, in the past from what i observed below, they focused more on movements and had a more athletic approach compared to what we see now which is purely just posing and flaunting the body. Sometimes even just posing for the pictures now takes so much effort. As we all know by now with the help of technology, many of us used photoshop or even applications on our smart phone to edit ourselves to makes us look more flattering and enhanced. Last i checked, you can make your legs look longer, chest and bottom bigger and rounder just by simply manoeuvring the application from your phone. Well that is also considered an art. An art of deceit, because if you know or see them in real life, they look nothing like the photos. It's basically creating an entire persona for yourself in the virtual world, sometimes it gets addictive and you lose yourself in it.

1920

Unidentified photographer, German Diver, 1920

Gelatin silver print 4 x 3 In

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1930

Paul Wolff, Untitled [Shadows of tennis players], 1930 (ca) Gelatin silver print, ferrotyped 16.6 x 23.2 cm

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1935

Kurt Reichert, In Licht und Sonne #4 [In Licht und Sonne] 1935 Gelatin silver print 8.2 x 5.2 cm

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1950-1965 (ca)

Unidentified photographer (American) [Two boxers in middle of match] 1950-1965 (ca) Gelatin silver print 19.1 × 24 cm (7 1/2 × 9 7/16 in.)

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1990s

Anyone remember this workout get up in the 90s? I got this screen grab from google and this was from a youtube video. During the 90s i'm sure most mothers will be monkeying or struggling in front of the television emulating what this programme is trying to do for housewives, "quick workout at home". Everybody loves that.

Working out becomes performative and instructional in the 90s which encourages people to work out at home if they have no time for gym.

Now

As of now in 2017, over the past decade people have been very conscious about their health and wellness, which includes aesthetics as well. The gyms are expanding and opening everywhere governments are building public gyms near almost every neighbourhood, salads and healthy food are sold everywhere. This kind of lifestyle that has been inculcated to us has made us so aware of our body and want to look good be it for others or for ourselves. We care so much about our image that it becomes an obsession.

Photography on the health and fitness genre these days are so commercialised and the kind of image they are trying to sell is sometimes so unrealistically lean which sends the wrong message to so many girls which resulted in them crash dieting. It is definitely not healthy, it's like setting a beauty template to the society. Just like when certain brands, they market lingerie and sportswear in a way that they are trying to sell the image instead of promoting the product and what it stands for. They are selling the idea, "wear this set of lingerie so that you can look like me", and the models are extremely senselessly thin. It's a pretty vicious way to use the photography to hit on people's insecurities. But then again it's not wrong because they are being very smart about the way they choose to market and earn from the world. It's fine i guess, the audience just have to be more self aware when it comes to this. This is just my two cents of another way of using photography as a medium.