Looking at Images/Looking at Ourselves
Humor and pathos clash in Mario DiGirolamo’s 1959 New York street scene of an overweight, disheveled woman grimacing while standing incongruously next to a department store display window depicting the iconic perfection of mannequins. The fact that the ideal is on sale adds a level of irony at best, cruel hoax at worst.
There is an instantaneous visceral reaction to the image. It reads at first like a visual one-liner, a zinger of a fat joke at the subject’s expense, funny in our human need for a sense of superiority. But it compels us to keep looking, and unlike the tired genre of humor that is only funny behind the back of its subject, the image has a depth that creates a tension in our own viewing of it. Are we really that callous, or is there something to be learned about ourselves, a way to see the world with more empathy?
The longer we view the image, the more nuances are revealed. The windows reflect the street scene of buildings and cars. Cars in photography act as time stamps. They are as ubiquitous in urban photography as trees are in landscapes, but unlike trees the design instantaneously tells us the era of the image. As we peer into the window we know we are looking at a mid-century photograph, and like the best images from that period, this one freezes, for a moment, a slice of the American experience.
The composition is bisected between the plain and the glamourous: a simple woman with a hard life, a bag of ice tied around a tired ankle suffering under the weight of its task, a utilitarian dress with pocket and the final remnant of an unneeded snack juxtaposed against the sleek modernity of fashion, replete with the futuristic glow of the display window lighting.
We can hardly imagine her life, but that is what DiGirolamo has invited us to do. He has introduced us to someone out of our comfort zone, made us laugh and almost as quickly, made us reflect on and question what made us do so.
It is a short story in silver gelatin, and like the best of Mark Twain’s tales, uses humor to ease us into a more uncomfortable fable, one about our own humanity.
To see more of Mario DiGirolamo’s mid-century photography, go to his website: http://www.mariodigirolamo.com
#PhotosWeLove
