De cuando habitamos el cuerpo/From when we inhabit the body by Carol Espindola
Issue 156

“Our body changes depending on how we inhabit it, attending, of course, to its inertia, but also, to ‘how is it that we are allowed to inhabit it’...”
Siobhan F. Guerrero McManus

When I was a child, I chose my friends based on the observation of their bodies. I preferred those who, like me, were not "perfect" (so I had learned so far). They were similar in height to me (smaller than the average), preferably with wide thighs (like mine), brunettes, like me. In friends, I preferred those who were clumsy at sports, but distinguished from good and bad spelling, they did not have athletic bodies but they could make elaborate plans on how to conquer the world during the hour of playtime.

I understood since then that the shape of your body could define the way you relate to the world. A little later, in my teens, I discovered that by having wide thighs and buttocks, big boys made you easy prey for bullying and that most teenage boys around me could claim that I sexually desired their attention. As if the structure of my body was intended for the satisfaction of someone else, regardless of my preferences and personal decision to be or not, a sexual being. I felt ashamed of my body. I preferred to take the family pictures instead of being in them.

Privately, I really felt comfortable with my body, I was strong, quick in the bike, good at skating, great at brain games, read a lot faster than average, I liked the color of my skin. In private, too, I wondered if I was the one who had a problem with my body.

When I started photography, I was interested in the absence of the body, as a kind of denial of its importance, of the impossibility of inhabiting it with freedom. I photographed the feminine domestic space, the lonely village fairs, flora and fauna dominated by humans, all without any human presence. I knew that I was free to love my body and inhabit it in the most honest way possible without revealing a photographic image.

When my daughters began to grow up and stop being girls, I began to see the body itself as a really important storyteller. Observing the posture of the body, its transformations, its relationship with the clothes that it covers, I realized that my own body was telling a story. I turned the camera and began to photograph myself. I wanted to talk about the naked female body, as a space where time passed. Getting rid of the burden attributed to it and being able to stop just to contemplate it.

For me nudity is a way of inhabiting the body. To show honestly and undoubtedly who I know is. Showing the naked body and questioning the ways in that we have been taught to inhabit it is my way of making art, of making my body statement.

Carol Espindola (she/her/ella) lives and works in Tlaxcala, Mexico .
carolespindola.com | @espindolacarol

Images © Carol Espindola