Immortality

Visual images of our bodies immortalize us. They create points of reference that can be used to describe a person to somebody who didn’t know them. Whether is a photo album or a painting in a museum, there is a story behind every image, just waiting to be told. Much of what we know of history today stems from the art that was created centuries ago. By including disabled bodies in art, we are also including them in history.

I think that is why the portrayal of disabled bodies in art is so important. In the first paragraph of our reading, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson writes about the ways disabled people were portrayed in freak shows, and calls it “sensational, sentimental, or pathological.” For this reading, and the previous readings that we’ve had, I imagined myself in a museum, staring at a large wall with the large paintings of disabled people who are portrayed in a negative light. This is the relationship between the portrait and the viewer. Viewing those portraits will make me think, unconsciously at least, that people who are disabled are freaks or to be pitied. I have also thought about the relationship between the artist and the portrait. We have spoken about it in class, and discussed how the artist should take some for of responsibility on how they portray their subject. And then when we discuss the relationship between the artist and the subject we talk mostly about consent and how the subject wants to be portrayed. And in my head, all of this is happening when everybody is alive. But realistically, at some point in the future it will only be the viewer and the portrait. I find it sad that somebody’s life, represented by one portrait, will give them a legacy composed of freakiness or pity.