The Body at Risk explores ten significant photographic projects from the last one hundred years that depict the vulnerabilities of the human condition. The exhibition shows how individual lives are shaped by a range of challenging circumstances, including war, disease, poverty, pollution, domestic violence, age, and labor. It provides insight into the social context in which the photographs were taken by integrating perspectives from anthropology, sociology, political history, photographic history, and news coverage along with writings and interviews by and with the photographers. Among the sixteen renowned photographers represented are Donna Ferrato, Lori Grinker, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Gideon Mendel, Sebastião Salgado, and W. Eugene Smith.
"Piriya" learns to write in Sinhalese at the Methsevana Government Rehabilitation Center for Girls in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, 1999
© Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images
Irwinville Farms, Georgia. Inoculation for typhoid in the clinic, 1938
FSA-OWI Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Some adolescents in Bibb Mill No. 1, Macon, Georgia, 1909
Courtesy the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Treatment Action Campaign March, XIII International AIDS Conference, Durban, KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa. A protest march through the streets of Durban organized by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) during the "Breaking the Silence" International AIDS Conference. The protesters were demanding free access to drug therapy for people with HIV or AIDS in Third World countries. Protesters wore HIV-positive tee shirts to challenge the stigma so often associated with the disease, 2000
© Gideon Mendel/Corbis
Courtesy the photographer and Corbis
