The Body at Risk.

In her catalog for the "The Body at Risk" exhibition, curator Carol Squiers has created an essential document of the history of concerned photography as it addresses issues relate to the health of the human body. The chronological presentation offers a sequential look at historical public health challenges and reform initiatives and their reflection in current debates, as well as serving to heighten Squiers's contention that the American health care and social service systems, long weighed down by myriad political and economic strangleholds, need reform.

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In her Foreword, Squiers points out that the subjects of these works are not depicted as victims and while these activist photographers were not chiefly concerned with aesthetics, the resulting images are "vital, compelling, subtle, and persuasive." From Lewis W. Hine's expose of child labor practices to Donna Ferrato's shockingly intimate portraits of domestic abuse to Lori Grinker's narratives of veterans of wars and civil conflicts to David T. Hanson's Waste Land (where the unseen human bodies echo the often invisible toxins to which they are subjected), the book is replete with examples of groundbreaking documentary and social photography. Each selection of photographs is accompanied by Squiers's astute commentary on specific aesthetic aspects and the circumstances of production of the work, as well as in-depth social, political, and economic context.

The project was co-sponsored by the Milbank Memorial Fund, uniting a private foundation devoted to improving public health with ICP, an arts organization with which it shares social concerns. While Squiers references the demise of the magazines that supported activist photography in earlier eras, she notes that activist practice "remains vital"--perhaps this unique pairing is a bellwether for a future in which more artists, and arts organizations, are willing and able to demonstrate their concern and offer documentary evidence of the body at risk.