Bodybuilders

• Photographer
  Giampiero Assumma

“I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge?” Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel Bodybuilders are athletes actively engaged in designing a new physiognomy, generating a real model for anthropocentrism. I portrayed, often from behind the scene, their preparation rituals, as well as their theatrical poses on stage. These figures have left behind the classical standards of proportion, defining instead new cultural body patterns. The dominant idea is hypertrophy: the muscles are potentially modified, expanded and sculpted endlessly. What else attracts the audience if not the performance side of these competitions constructed on the athletes’ disclaim of old forms and therefore of all of us? The first indistinct body, “human too human”, is no longer shared: the bodybuilder sacrifices it in favour of a celebration and ultimately to the worship of Self.” Giampiero Assumma