Abstract
This is basically a paper
about artistic evaluation and
how multiple interpretations
can give rise to inconsistent
and conflicting meanings.
Images like Joel-Peter Witkin’s
First
Casting for Milo
(2004)
challenge the viewer to
look closely, understand
the formal properties at
work, and then extract a
meaning that ultimately asks,
Is the model exploited or
empowered? Is Karen Duffy,
pictured here, vulnerable
and “enfreaked” or is she
potentially subversive,
transgressive, and perhaps
self-empowered?
I will offer an argument in agreement with artist/author/
performer Ann Millett-Gallant that favors the latter interpretation,
but will augment and complicate the issue by also introducing a
pointed question or two taken from a recent analysis by Cynthia
Freeland on objectification. I judge the works by photographer
Joel-Peter Witkin to be representations of disabled persons
who are empowered through agency and pride, but I also
worry about the risk of multiple, conflicting interpretations
on the part of viewers who do not, or cannot, entertain such
enlightened readings. Like second wave feminist views about
pornography that depicted women in demeaning ways, or
feminist critiques of Judy Chicago’s
The Dinner Party
, Witkin’s
photos can be judged as potentially offensive. But they are
also objects of beauty—both in terms of aesthetic properties
(they are magnificent studies in black and white, shadows, the
human body, with many classical references) and because of
the feeling of beauty and pride felt by the posers, who become
performers of their own beauty and pride. I argue that beauty
trumps offensiveness. Pride wins. But I’m not sure that everyone
will agree.