Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and other Traveling Troupes - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597110566 ISBN 13: 9781597110563

Publisher: Aperture, 2008

Synopsis

In her sympathetic pictures of contortionists, dwarves, ballroom dancers and wrestlers from small towns in Israel, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and England, Michal Chelbin offers a glimpse into worlds both strange and familiar. Her subjects--usually individuals on society’s margins--tend to be portrayed offstage, at home, on the street or in a park, and in a disarmingly direct engagement with the viewer: “My aim is to record a scene where there is a mixture of direct information and enigmas and in which there are visual contrasts between young and old, large and small, normal and abnormal,” she writes. This sense of candid confrontation between subject and camera is particularly disarming when those subjects are prepubescent girls, whose bodies, as Chelbin puts it, “might be still that of a child, [but] their gazes sometimes imply differently.” Chelbin’s palette is intensely saturated with distinctive pinks, blues and greens, evoking a painterly atmosphere, even occasionally making explicit reference to art history. Though her influences are evident--most notably August Sander and Diane Arbus--the compelling photographs gathered in this first monograph have a unique visual and emotional impact.

About this title

Review

"In her sympathetic and richly detailed portraits Michal Chelbin offers a glimpse into worlds both strange and familiar." --Photo District News

"Far from being purely a collection of oddities Strangely Familiar explores the traveling and performing that make up the lifestyle most of the subjects were born into." --HotShoe

"Pages lit up with intensely close depictions of young 'acrobats, athletes, and other traveling troupes' give gorgeous glimpses into worlds that are exotic and yet almost intimate." -- Kate O'Dowd --Image (Ireland)

"Like a talented painter, Michal Chelbin creates portraits that eloquently speak a language of contrasts--between shadow and highlight, as well as the dark and light sides of life." -- Miki Johnson --American Photo Magazine

"This is one photography book you can't flip through; rather, the images require the viewer to halt and analyze. Each photograph is carefully staged, and its various elements evoke a compelling tension." -- Karen MacMurray --Library Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1597110566
• ISBN 13: 9781597110563
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 112