In dialogue with fellow photographer Sam Geballe, I was compelled to make an image responding to the criticisms our bodies provoke. Between our backs runs a line, a connection to an experience we both carry in the body. We know what it is to be scorned by those looks both of disgust and “concern.” Between us, we confront the gaze – there is nothing to hide. To carry ourselves in a body devalued by society can often be lonesome. Between us is a conversation, a united understanding of what we fight for. Between us is not a before and after. We are told to shrink ourselves, to apologize. Between us we take the space we are told we don’t deserve.
Please visit Sam Geballe’s website at: https://samgeballe.com/
This pose is an ode to Laura Aguilar, whose work served as a deep inspiration and spark to discovery decades ago. Thank you to Sybil Venegas and Anthony Velasco for including this piece in "Viva Las Fotos: A Memorial for Laura Aguilar" in 2018.
Fore more of Aguilar's work please visit: https://www.lauraaguilarphotography.com/
Archival Pigment Print
Liquid Emulsion on Ceramic Plates (2014)
Triptych: Installation of three 20'' x 100''
In retrospect, the title of this work makes me deeply uncomfortable, but in honoring my journey it must remain. Oftentimes, when a fat person does anything beyond what society might expect, they are labelled “brave.” In 2008, I too believed this as I aimed the camera at myself, afraid of my own reflection. To be fat is to live from the neck up, to overperform humor, softness, empathy and above all, shame. This work was tightly cropped from the beginning, hoping no one, even myself, would see what I believed to be this burden of a body I lugged around. What surprised me through the years is the gradual distance between myself and the lens and a glow to the bodies I photographed. It turns out, I never was a burden, and this work lives as a reminder to challenge my own internalized anti-fatness and where I was at in that journey.
