A unique collaboration between a Cambridge University Museum and a group of photography students from Cambridge Regional College will open to the public from tomorrow.

Looking at how teenagers view their own bodies, and how visual representations in everyday life and in the media shape the way we look at ourselves, Bodies Exposed: Identity and the Image, runs from March 19 to April 10 at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Jocelyne Dudding, photographic collections manager at the Museum said: “In a visually overloaded world we are bombarded with images of how we should look, act, and think.

“These images can define who we are. This exhibition demonstrates the conflicting ways we represent ourselves by exploring themes such as beauty, gender, and individuality. Is our identity created from reality, fantasy, or digitally enhanced ideals?

“The students and their photographs also question whether museums reinforce or disrupt who we think we are.”

The exhibition is a collaborative project between National Diploma Photography Students at Cambridge Regional College and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

One of the budding photographers involved in the project, Richard Williams, said: “I had never been to the Museum before, and I didn’t even know what Anthropology meant, so this has really opened me up the different yet similar ways people can represent themselves.”

The students have responded through photography to the themes of art, science, and imagination considered in Assembling Bodies, the Museum’s hugely popular exhibition which explores the way the human body has been viewed throughout history.

Leading photographer Mark Adams, an artist in residence at the Museum who has been working with the students, said: “Their work is bloody good, fizzing with colour and teenage body obsessions. Baudrillard (the French philosopher and photographer) said we humans go round emitting signs - the signs emitted by these students in their photos are loud!”

Julia Johnson, photography lecturer at the college, said: “The students' work for Bodies Exposed is rich with contextual meaning. In order to produce their images, the students have insisted on expressing both the reality and fiction surrounding youth culture in relation to themes such as greed, love, beauty and drama. They have searched for an understanding that has revealed more contradictions.”
 

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