Collector breaks beauty norms "At some point, idealized female bodies became too one-sided for me"

While art has always staged, evaluated and reshaped the female body, today social media makes every person the curator of their own body - filtered and optimized. But as new as this self-staging may seem, it is not, as the exhibition "Body Sculpture" by Martin Bölsterli shows.

"I wasn't interested in individual beautiful pictures, but in making a development visible," says art collector Martin Bölsterli, who has fulfilled a heartfelt wish with "Body Sculpture".

It all began with the first photograph of supermodel Helena Christensen, captured by Herb Ritts in 1996, which he bought at auction. "In the beginning, I mainly collected idealized female bodies. At some point, that became too one-sided for me," says Bölsterli to blue News.

This becomes clear in the exhibition: the stagings could hardly be more different. "Body images not only change over time, but also from region to region. Every culture has its own ideas about what can and cannot be shown," says curator Daniel Blochwitz. As a private collection, the selection inevitably remains subjective - which is precisely why gaps are allowed to remain visible.

"There are photographs in the collection that I might never have bought as individual works. But in the context of the overall development of the image of women, they are indispensable," says Martin Bölsterli. He hesitated with some of the works, such as a photograph by Balthasar Burkhardt that refers to Courbet's 'L'origine du monde'. "But it belongs in the exhibition precisely because of its art-historical context."

Old poses, new platforms

Today, social media makes every person the curator of their own body. This only opens up new freedoms to a limited extent - because at the same time, control over the ubiquitous female body is growing. Beauty standards - and increasingly algorithms - influence what is visible and what is not. "Today, self-staging is often understood as empowerment. At the same time, it remains ambivalent because many images ultimately serve to sell something," says Daniel Blochwitz.

"We often fall back on old ways of looking at things. Many things are not really new," says the curator. This becomes particularly clear in one section of the exhibition, which shows historical photographs in which light and shadow create lines and patterns across the body. It is precisely this kind of shadow play, which sculpturally models the body - zebra-like stripes, for example - that can also be found in countless influencer images today. Photographers such as Barry Konnoli, William Carter and Pol Friese have already worked with these effects.

The poses that circulate on social media today also often have a surprisingly long tradition. "Certain poses have been taken up again and again since antiquity because photographers consciously refer to earlier depictions," says Blochwitz. Our visual memory plays a central role in this: many of these poses seem familiar to us because we unconsciously fall back on image patterns that are deeply anchored in our visual memory.

A particularly clear example of social influence can be seen in body hair. Gillette first launched razors for women on the market in 1915 and advertised them specifically. With fashion showing more skin, the idea suddenly arose that women's bodies should be hairless - a norm that still has an impact today.

AI and body images - danger of losing touch with reality

"Today we see a much greater variety of bodies than in the past. At the same time, idealized images remain very influential," explains Blochwitz. With filters and AI, bodies can now be changed in seconds, sometimes so perfectly that it is not always obvious that they are not real. "The danger is that we lose touch with reality and create bodies that have very little to do with real people," he says.

At the same time, a counter-movement seems to be underway: More and more female photographers are contributing their own view of the body.

What particularly surprised the curator when preparing the exhibition was its complexity. "The more you look at body images, the more you realize how much history and meaning there is in these pictures." And perhaps also how much these images still determine how we see ourselves today.

"Body Sculpture", a collection of photographs reflecting body shape, time and change, runs until April 24, 2026 at Zurich's Maag Areal (Moyo). Admission is free.

Video from the department