In a Russian version of Joel-Peter Witkin mixed with Diane Arbus, Alla Esipovich serves up two series of straight photographic reflections on the ubiquitous human freak show. In one of them, we are treated to black-and-white scenario portraits of dwarves absurdly disporting themselves in various states of dress and undress. In the other, we are invited into the homes of married couples in which the husband is an old man and the wife a young woman, through unassuming and poignant formal color portraits. The grotesque always upstages the sentimental, so the little people steal Esipovich’s first Chicago show, most extravagantly in a shot of a middle-age hulk of a male dwarf squatting on a kitchen table and looming like a monster over a wispy little girl in a high chair who couldn’t care less. (Michael Weinstein)
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
