This December 2025 issue of BJP explores how images of the body – particularly those that depict love, desire, and obsession – challenge what Martin Jay called the “disinterested gaze”.

The answers, like love itself, are never simple. Diego Moreno’s deeply personal portraits merge sacred imagery with erotic encounters, seeking reconciliation between body and soul while archivist Stefan Dickers reconsiders pornography and kink as social history. Hoda Afshar traces fixation through a colonial archive; Andi Galdí Vinkó exposes what science omits from its depiction of the body; and Mark Sealy envisions a liberatory photographic future that resists the violence of observation. But artists Alba Zari and Amandine Kuhlmann reflect on the objectification embedded even in self-representation. 

The issue also features BJP’s Agenda, Projects, and Intelligence sections, with highlights including exhibitions on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Italy, Alejandro Cartagena at SFMOMA, the V&A Photography Centre’s rehang, and insights from World Press Photo’s Joumana El Zein Khoury.

Issue 7924. Softback, 194 pages.