Composing Dwarfism: Reframing Short Stature in Contemporary Photography
Main Article Content
Keywords
art history, Ricardo Gil, Laura Swanson
Abstract
This paper will explore the work of two contemporary dwarf photographers, Ricardo Gil and Laura Swanson, who use different conceptual and technical methods to re-frame the figure of the dwarf subject. The dwarf has often been a marginalized subject in the history of photography, so I am interested in exploring how the strategies that Gil and Swanson employ might resist reductive meanings, and offer alternative readings to the dwarf beyond the oppositional gaze. The articulation of these methods will be prefaced by a focused discussion of dwarf depictions in the history of photography based on the intentions of the photographer, so that the work of several photographers might be powerfully juxtaposed with the radical counter-strategies that Gil and Swanson utilize.
Figure 1 and 2:
Figure 3 and 4:
Figure 5 and 6:
Figure 7 and 8:
Figure 9 and 10:
Figure 11 and 12:
Figure 13 and 14:
Figure 15 and 16:
Figure 17 and 18:
Image Credits
Figure 1: George Dureau, Short Sonny, ca. 1970, photograph courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery
Figure 2: George Dureau, Ricardo Gil, ca. 1970, photograph courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery
Figure 3: Ricardo Gil and George Dureau, 2012, photograph courtesy of Jason Kruppa
Figure 4: Arthur Fellig (Weegee), Drinking In Style, 1943: Shorty, the “Bowery Cherub”
celebrates New Year's Eve at Sammy's Bar, in the Bowery district of New York.
© Weegee (Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography /Getty Images
Figure 5: Mary Ellen Mark, Twin Brothers Tulsi and Basant (Great Famous Circus, Calcutta, India), 1989, photograph courtesy of the artist
Figure 6: Bruce Davidson, The Dwarf, 1958, photograph courtesy of Magnum Photos, New York
Figure 7: Ricardo Gil, Walking Man and Mannequins, c. 1996, photograph courtesy the artist
Figures 8 & 9: David’s Kitchen, 1997, and Ricardo Gil, Charles, Eric and Meg, 1999, photographs courtesy of the artist
Figures 10 & 11: Garry Winogrand, New York, ca. 1968 and American Legion Convention, Dallas, Texas, 1964
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, photographs courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Figures 12 & 13: Kevin Michael Connolly, Girl; London, England, 2007, and Man; Reykjavik, Iceland, 2007, photographs courtesy of the artist
Figures 14 – 17: Laura Swanson, Anti-Self Portraits, 2005-2008, photographs courtesy the artist
Figure 18: Joel-Peter Witkin, Dwarf From Naples, Rome, 2006 © Joel-Peter Witkin / photograph courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago
References
Arbus, D. (2012). Diane Arbus: An Aperture monograph. New York: Aperture Foundation Books.
Arbus, D. (1995). Diane Arbus: untitled. New York: Aperture Foundation.
Berger, J. and J. Mohr. (1982). Another way of telling. New York: Pantheon Books.
Bogdan, R. (1988). Freak show: Presenting human oddities for amusement and profit. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Bonner, T. (2013, September 10). Mellon Creative Resident Interview: Laura Swanson [Web log content]. Retrieved from http://blogs.haverford.edu/mellon/2013/09/10/lauraswanson/
Esteban Muñoz, J. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). The Politics of staring: Visual rhetorics of disability in popular photography. S.L. Snyder, B. J. Brueggemann, R. Garland-Thomson (Eds.). Disability studies: Enabling the humanities (56-75). New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2009). Staring: How we look. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gil, R. (2013). Interview with the author, December 11.
Grosz, E. (1996). Intolerable ambiguity: Freaks as/at the limit. R. Garland- Thomson (Ed.). Freakery: Cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body (55-66). New York and London: New York University Press.
Hevey, D. (2010). The Enfreakment of Photography. L. J. Davis (Ed.). The Disability Studies Reader (507-521). New York and London: Routledge. Third Edition.
hooks, b. (1992). The Oppositional gaze: Black female spectators. Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press,
Inouye, K. (2013). Selfless at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco, SFAQ International Arts and Culture, http://www.sfaqonline.com/2013/06/selfless-at-mark-wolfe-contemporary-art-san-francisco/. Accessed November 18.
La Grange, A. (2005). Basic critical theory for photographers. New York: Focal Press.
Millett-Gallant, A. (2010). The disabled body in contemporary art. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Millett-Gallant, A. (2008). Staring back and forth: The photographs of Kevin Connolly.Disability Studies Quarterly, 28 (3), http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/124/124.
Newbury, D. (1996). Reconstructing the self: Photography, education and disability. Disability & Society, 11 (3), 349-360.
Nochlin, L. (1989). The imaginary orient. The politics of vision: Essays on nineteenth-century art and society. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.
Solomon-Godeau, A. (1994). Inside/out. Public information: Desire, disaster, document. San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 88-101.
Swanson, L. (2013). Mellon creative resident interview: Laura Swanson. http://blogs.haverford.edu/mellon/2013/09/10/lauraswanson/
Accessed November 18.
Tagg, J. (1993). The burden of representation: Essays on photographies and histories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Article Sidebar
Article Details
RDS Journal is an open-access journal, create a free account to read full articles and to submit a proposal. For visual arts and multimedia, submission will be considered evidence that you are offering RDS the right to display your work without penalty, compensation or royalties.
Amanda Cachia, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego
Amanda Cachia is a PhD student in Art History, Theory & Criticism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. Her curatorial and academic work is focused on representations of complex embodiment at the intersection of disability studies and contemporary art.