Bodies: BIG IDEAS // small books

by Susie Orbach
BIG IDEAS // small books A Picador Paperback Original

• A 2010 Communication Arts Photography Annual 51 Winner

Photograph by Jon Shireman

Throughout the Western world, people have come to believe that general dissatisfaction can be relieved by some change in their bodies. Here Susie Orbach explains the origins of this condition, and examines its implications for all of us.

Instead of using our bodies to change and remake the outside world, we spend our energy and time changing and remaking our bodies in the search for something else.

In my brain storming phone discussions with the photographer Jon Shireman, we were trying to define what this book was about. After several fruitless conversations, the word "Erase" came up. I immediately saw a body getting erase. Maybe a photograph of a person. But we decided a pencil drawing of a form would work best in the Big Ideas series look. I was more interested in the action. To also bring across the concept that we reform ourselves, using a drawing allowed us to use the leftover eraser bits to reform it back into the new body's shape.



This is an alternate image that I liked very much and wanted to use, right until the final mechanical stage. But in the end, I thought it suggested cloning or creating another body more than remaking yourself. I kept seeing Athena leaping out of Zeus' head fully grown:


Mary Cregan wrote a small piece about the cover in her Book Covers Blog, The Financial Times.



Susie Orbach on The Colbert Report:

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