Photography has a unique capacity to take us right to humanity’s extremes. Whether it’s the outsiders photographed by Diane Arbus, the revelatory motion studies of the human body made by Eadweard Muybridge, views of remote Indigenous communities taken by the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, or in-your-face shots of heated competition from the sports photographer Walter Iooss, photographs can wow us with transformational dispatches from the fringes of the human condition.
All four of those photographers, plus about three dozen more, can be seen at the Phoenix Art Museum’s captivating new show Muscle Memory. It aims to delve into the question of how our human bodies can at once be the focus of so much of our awareness while also being something we frequently ignore.
