After listening to to Riva Lehrer's TED talk, I consciously attempted to suspend my feelings of pity when I viewed our assigned photos. I first chose to look at Doug Auld's burn portraits of burn victims, and my initial attempts to avoid pity immediately descended into failure. Guiltily, I found myself only able to see the portrait's subjects as victims of tragedy, and I desperately searched for ways to see the subjects as something outside of their physical appearance. As I continued to scroll through the gallery, however, I felt a shift in my nascent feelings; upon reflecting on the purpose of our earlier readings, I began to wonder if my ability to view the subjects without pity actually required my acknowldegment of their tragedy.

Of all the portraits, the ones that struck me the most were by Robin Berenholz. They are simple portraits, compared to those made by the other artists, with the main medium, or only medium for some, being graphite. That, combined with the fact that the portraits were posted on tumblr, really struck me as unique. Although that can make the portraits seem amateur, sloppy, or illegitimate, I feel like this is what gives them their power. The portraits are very raw in style, many of them looking like they were drawn quickly. Yet, this does not detract from their authenticity, rather it makes the emotions conveyed by the portrait even more authentic. They could be drawn by anyone, and tumblr provides a platform where they can be easily shared and stumbled upon by others.

I found it interesting that Riva Lehrer pointed out that viewers interpret depictions of the able-bodied as tributes, while they tend to pity and feel sorrow in response to works of the disabled. People tend to assume that people with bodies that differ than those of “the norm” are in pain or are unhappy with themselves, so I appreciate that Riva chooses to have her subjects contribute to their portraits, to clarify how they see themselves and confidently claim the portraits of their bodies as theirs. Through this process, Riva and her subjects collaboratively create and define a genuine series of portraits.

I was surprised in Riva Lehrer’s Ted Talk when she said that she received so much push back when she tried making self portraits or portraits of other disabled people for her art classes in school. I have always thought of art as an abstract medium where you can present anything in any way you want and be accepted and appreciated. I never thought of art and portraiture as having a specific look to be a proper model. Also, I would’ve expected people to celebrate the disabled community rather than shut it down the way they did to Riva; I expected a more open-minded viewpoint from other artists. Also, people always assume that disabled people are in pain, when in reality they can be fully functional human beings that are in fact even more happy than fully-abled bodies.

I went through a couple portraits and a lot of them interested me. They were different from what I was used to and a lot of them represented individuals who we don't often see represented so it was cool to look at them. However when I got to the portraits labeled "State of Grace" it took me aback. I'll be honest, I saw the gallery open in the next page and I felt my heart jump .They created the biggest shock reaction, and quickly I caught myself doing exactly what Riva talked about in her TedTalk. I stopped seeing anything in the portrait except for the burns, and they were engulfed as Riva said "in a fog of pity". I remembered her TedTalk so I took a moment and stopped looking at the burns.

PORTRAITS OF DISABILITY AND DIFFERENCE

Writing Seminar 118a                                                                          Prof. Kristin Lindgren

Fall 2017                                                                                             Stokes 118IA             

T-Th 2:30-4                                                                                        klindgre@haverford.edu

VCAM 102                                                                                             610-220-3670

COURSE DESCRIPTION              

by John Seely Brown, 1999

Based on a tape transcription of a talk at the 1999 Conference on Higher Education of the American Association for Higher Education, John Seely Brown's remarks which pre-date Google, Facebook, Twitter, MOOCs, smart phones, and the Internet of Things are relevant almost 20 years later. How are we doing at creating a "learning ecology" both in our culture as a whole and in our smaller communities?
 

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