The Chameleon Body

The highly charged characters who people the pages of The Chameleon Body have adopted an array of differing degrees of bodily metamorphosis: from minimal facial piercings, to more extreme and defiant acts, such as those of the Italian performance artist Franko B, who uses his own flesh and blood to express alienation and trauma. All of them, however, bear witness to the body's capacity for change and transformation: this is the theme of The Chameleon Body. The photographs are framed by art historian David Alan Mellor's Introduction, which analyses the meaning and content of these images, and an essay by leading social anthropologist Anthony Shelton examining fetishism's cultural sources.