Counting Lessons in Purgatory

This print, made during the artist’s graduate studies at the University of New Mexico,  demonstrates his characteristic interest in medical imagery and specimens, anomalous flesh and atypical bodies, exhibitionism and the gaze, with an economy of means that contrasts with the complex compositions in years to come. The minimal setting is reminiscent of an old studio or theater backdrop but also calls to mind the vignetting and technical imperfections of nineteenth-century photographic prints, as well as the dome shape of printed used by Julia Margaret Cameron and common to stereographs. Witkin also refers to the use of early photography to  document and distribute images of scientific or medical interest, in this case, human physical anomalies.

Our gaze is clearly directed to the figure at center, a lone, naked body of small stature, with limbs curled inward and eyes covered by a hat or headdress of nearly co-equal size. At the top of the hat, a single eye peers out as if through a periscope, moving the image out of the documentary realm and into the imaginary. Isolated and exposed, the figure’s drawn limbs and covered eyes with surreptitious gaze convey a sense of physical and psychological vulnerability. Across the front of the picture are lines that cue the idea of restraint. The odd hat is unsettling, even more so as the vehicle by which the object of our gaze peers back, bearing witness to our gaping curiosity that perhaps provides the purgatory of the title.