Performing Amputation

Joel-Peter Witkin’s Humor and Fear (1999) stages a young amputee model in a theatrical, pseudo-antique scene. The image embodies seemingly disparate genres for representing the body: artistic, theatrical, medical, and freakish. She is posed nude on a pedestal or chest that resembles a Classical sarcophagus with its figurative sculptural program, and leans on one arm and hip, with her other arm raised to display a small bowl. Her posture is unnatural for a portrait subject, as her body becomes embedded in an allegorical program, like the ones carved into her pedestal. Surrounded by vegetal props that resemble a Greek entablature motif, the model is framed in a photographic vignette that creates a proscenium arch—the symbol of Greek theater. This background, printed in painterly, heavy inks, contrasts with the glaring whites of her marble-like skin and sets off her illuminated body as a decorative sculptural, architectural, or still life object. The marks Witkin has applied to the plate and the sepia washes over the print give the photograph an additional antique aesthetic. The model resembles a generic art historical nude, yet the photograph emphasizes the tangible materiality of her graphically naked, explicit body. The photographic medium highlights the texture of her flesh and pubic hair, which surpasses the illusion of marble and her possible symbolic connotations; with scientific accuracy, the photograph emphasizes the tactility of the scene. The folds in her skin pair visually with the folds in an animated drapery that surrounds her body, climbs over one arm, and seems to have a life of its own, again contrasting with and highlighting the static, inanimate pose of the model (Fig. 4.1).