This paper analyzes and compares two photographs of women doing backbends. One is a modern Instagram photo of a female yogi by Alessandro Sigismondi and the other one of a patient diagnosed with hysteria at the Salpêtrières Hospital, photographed in Paris in the 19th century. The photographs are used as a starting point for further discussion about the meaning of images where women are doing backbends. The aim is to understand what these kinds of photographs represent and communicate. The theoretical framework is based on Roland Barthes idea of defining photography out of three perspectives as described in Camera Lucida, the referent’s, the photographer’s and the spectators. Laura Mulvey's thoughts on the male gaze in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is a theoretical complement. The method used is Roland Bathes semiotic method from the essay Rhetoric of the image. The study shows how the photographic occasion's imprint of reality is deeply colored by the events, relationships and expectations from outside. Despite the large difference in time, there are great similarities in how the ideal female body is exposed and how women manage and maneuver within the space constructed by the male gaze.