Once upon a time there was no facility for the everyday person, that is those people who could not commission the type of portrait whose eyes followed you wherever you were in the room, so beloved of tour guides, lashed with gold and cherubs or even an exotic person from a far off land or two, to objectively see what their fashion choices looked like, except fleetingly in a mirror or in the subjective commentary of those whom they asked how they may be looking. The advent of photography gave a wider schicht of the community the opportunity to record themselves and their self-presentation. With each new development in the technology of photography from daguerreotype to ambrotype to tintype to albumen paper photographs – down to the small carte de visite, that first appeared by the late 1850s in Paris, both the cost and the processes became less arcane and complex. Thus this opportunity to objectively record the fashion and styling choices, the chosen self-projection of a persona to the wider world, and even often the sitters’ own expertise of sewing and accessory making, millinery, embroidery, knitting and crochet, was extended progressively to further less well-off levels of the community.

Not only was the self celebrated in a manner that was both plural and trivial, and indeed even somewhat incontinent, a mid 19^th century version of the selfie through the agency of the photographer, the advent of cheap photography gave birth to the craze for exchanging photographs with friends and relatives. Photographs could be ordered in bulk quantities of wholesale proportion from local photography studios for exchanging with others and people began to build up collections of friends and associates. Thus too the cheap nineteenth century carte de visite further precursed the twenty first century explosion of phone and digital image production and exchange. At the same time photographers began making mass copies of images of political, cultural and social celebrities and the prominent which were then sold to the public. Queen Victoria gave John Jabez Edwin Mayall a license to mass produce and publish photographs of herself and her family members in 1860, ratifying what had been an ad hoc consumer driven process, and also contributing to the development of the modern professions of publicity and image control. With the range of imagery offered for sale, collectors could then slip into their family photograph albums, royalty, stage stars, generals, leaders, poets, composers and etc as if these celebrities were also intimates alongside those close members of the family circle.

As well as a fascination with collecting images of the beautiful, glamorous and enviable, there was, despite the Victorians’ stereotyped reputation amongst later generations for being staid and formal, also a mania for the emphatically physical reminders of other ability and other body types than the vanilla norm. Hence the proliferation of strange images of circus and sideshow stars from the mid-19^th century onwards. Dwarfs, giants, beaded ladies, armless wonders, people with multiple limbs, conjoined twins and many other people with disabilities and non-standard boy types captured public attention by means of photographs printed and distributed sometimes into the hundreds and thousands. Images of acrobats and contortionists, who also presented a striking and unconventional appearance via their training and bodily manipulation, and images of people from non-western cultures, particularly arrayed with indigenous dress and weaponry also found buyers amongst those who searched out unusual photographic imagery. In an era before adequate public health insurance and public health systems, families with children or members who were different or required special needs would often send them to a circus or a menagerie. Sales of photographs of sideshow freaks often brought back a small income to the person portrayed – most often substantially creamed off by their managers. Some families who were poor sold children with visible and spectacular signs of metabolistic difference to circuses and sideshow promoters.

One day this practice would be seen as unethical and unacceptable – just like making racial humour or racial caricatures as the basis of theatrical performances. In the 19^th century the extraordinary and extravagant lifestyles of General Tom Thumb, Commander Nutt, Minnie and Lavinia Warren who were little people of global renown made the fraekshow classy and elegant rather than gritty and shocking. They met royalty and world leaders, and towards the ends of their working lives came out to Australia. There were some interpersonal tensions, despite the group being packaged as symmetrical commodity with both Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt warren falling in love with Lavinia Warren in the early 1860s. Together the quartet earned huge salaries which they spent on the most remarkable range of luxury and bespoke goods including fashions, carriages, yachts, racehorses and palatial mansions with the most sumptuous of Victorian furnishings specially commissioned in proportion to their size not that of normal adults. An early newspaper advertisement rom April 1864 captures the sensational and cult appeal of the quartet of performers[i]

GEN. TOM THUMB
AND HIS
BEAUTIFUL LITTLE WIFE
The late Miss LAVINIA WARREN, the Fascinating Queen of Beauty!
COMMODORE NUTT
The Famous “$30,000 Nutt”
So called for having received that sum from Mr. P.T. Barnum for three years service.
ELFIN MINNIE WARREN
The Smallest Lady of her age ever seen.
Here are a Married Couple, a Bachelor and a Belle.
ALL FOUR WEIGHING BUT 100 LBS.
Perfect in Form and features.
The World never saw anything half so Wonderful!
NO LARGER THAN SO MANY BABIES!
Educated, intelligent, Social, Affable and Polite-
Who can wonder that crowds throng their Levees every day and are eager to feast their eyes

Because of the public’s fascination with people of extraordinary appearance, a nineteenth century photographer shot and posed this remarkable photograph now in Catherine Devenny’s magic box of inspiration of a giant and a small woman. Often photographers increased the pictorial interest of one sitter by putting together strange and visually striking combinations of unusual people. Like many small people in the 19^th century following on from the standards set by Tom Thumb, she is dressed as a highly fashionable and elegant woman. Having seen many similar images but not this one exactly, the young girl may be Millie Edwards, 1877-1919. The girl photographed certainly looks like her manner of personal styling and her general looks. Minnie toured globally as did Tom Thumb and his entourage and also met many significant people as they travelled. After her American-born husband Francis Flynn 1864-1898, died and was buried in Broken Hill after catching pneumonia on an Australian tour, where previously the couple had enjoyed vice regal receptions in Adelaide and constant press attention, Millie retired to live with her English family. who had migrated to the Coromonadel Peninsula in New Zealand, and she died in Christchurch in 1919. The man in this image wears far less glamorous dress and he does not appear to be identified in any of the considerable amount of online discussion of the most famous Victorian sideshow and circus personalities.

Not all of these photographs of the Other were exploitative. Sojourner Truth the black feminist and abolitionist made an income by selling her own images, often at her lectures to her respectful fans. She shows a neat postmodernist awareness of the inherent strangeness of the image, and its separation from the construction of “reality”. “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance” stated the inscription on the back of her publicity photographs. Wounded American Civil War veterans visited photographic studios and had printed photographs of their wounds and with long descriptions on the back listing the amount of children they had to support, the loss of their ability to earn and the fact that they had acquired these injuries in defending the community and its political and social values, arguing that it is surely time that the public give them something in return. What is most shocking is not the visible disability, but the economic exigencies that forced people to both image and narrate their injuries in such a dramatic and abject manner to try and earn enough money to keep them and their families

There has been a considerable interest of revival around the surrealistic impetus of these freakshow photographs and because of that in the twenty first century. They are traded enthusiastically on ebay and through speciality antique book, print and photography dealers. They have inspired everything from the Australian novel Little People by Jane Sullivan, to the cult TV series Carnivale to Lloyd Webbers hyperbolic turkey of a musical theatre piece Love Never Dies, which had a strong sideshow aesthetic. There are also photographic and creative and subgroup practices that reference these remarkable antique photographs, such as the work of Joel Peter Witkin and also many steam punk and neo-romantic image makers, who seek to capture the proto-surrealistic elements of the Victorian fascination with exceptional people.

Artists, writers, stylists, collectors and dealers parallel 19^th century audiences in having a seemingly endless obsession with these images. Until finally we look at these 19^th century pictures and wonder who is the exploited and who is the exploiter. The gravitas and seriousness and formality of 19^th century photostyling and poising gives away few secrets about the woman and man pictured on the image from Catherine Devenny’s box of procative and haunting images – are we devouring the strangeness with our eyes, or are the subjects dignified agents capitalising on our curiosity?

[i] http://www.yatespast.org/articles/tomthumb.html

Alzheimer’s is a creeping disease.

You have flashes of it at first – is Dad just getting old and changing?

Is personality a fixed thing or do people really continue to change?

Does everyone have a kernel inside of who they are?

Then, it’s like dog’s balls.

You want to stop believing that it’s happening, but there it is.

Dad has got dementia.

Either that, or he’s a complete prick and you just never noticed.

And then the worst/best thing happens – he turns and asks you: “what’s happening to me? what’s wrong with me? Why are we here seeing this psychiatrist?”

And you catch it in your throat and say, “well, because you have this thing called dementia Dad. And it’s not going to get better.”

And you hug each other and cry together in the waiting room of this prick psychiatrist, in front of a bunch of people you don’t know and you think – so that’s the Dad I used to know.

He’s still there. But he’s also gone.

And for the rest of his life you kind of want him to die, because what is life if it’s not being who you are?

And, in a way, being who he was kind of killed him in the end.

When the speech pathologist outlawed squares of milk chocolate and ice-cream because of “aspiration risk” we ignored it for a while.

But then we got down to thickened water – WTF is that? And he voted with his feet and stopped eating anything.

And then, gradually, slowly, he died.

I tell you, if I had the choice of drinking thickened water and living or ice-cream and dying – I know which way I’d fly.

1. Leprosy takes many forms, and if we shun the people who scare us and challenge us then we are not good people

2. Don’t be a dick.  I’m busy, you’re busy, we are all fucking busy.  Substitute busy for sad/tired/anxious/hurting/late/distracted…we all feel it regularly.  My feeling a thing isn’t more important than you feeling a thing, so let’s all just respect where other people are at.

3. We all learn differently so be patient with those you’re trying to explain things to.  Try communicating in different ways.  But most of all be patient.

4. Kindness is an infinite bucket.  If you see it as finite and dole it out parsimoniously, you will only ever get a finite amount back.  We need to get the word out that it is infinite.

5. Slow down.  When you are driving, when you are talking, when you are cooking.  Time is precious, and we need to savor each moment as it happens.  Try to cook a brisket quickly in a hot oven and you’ll get my drift.

6. Hurry up!  Don’t wait around to live your life, and don’t make excuses for not doing the things you want to do.  Waiting for a magical set of life circumstances to come about before acting just means you won’t ever do it.  Act.  Deal with the consequences.

7. Be brave.  You are an individual and you have a voice with merit.  Let others hear it.  By the same token, there are things for you to learn too.  Be brave enough to admit you were wrong and grow in that process. Vulnerabilities are only a weakness if you are afraid to let people know they are there.  Have a freak flag?  Fly it high.

8. Check your privilege.   We all have things that give us a leg up, and those aren’t part of us innately being better than someone else.  Know what privilege you have, and be aware of it when dealing with others.

9. The ability to learn is not confined to schools.  Art galleries, walks in the park, coffee with friends, the fucking Internet!  Ask questions and try to answer them.

10. Swearing is proven to be a benefit, so don’t stifle your salty voice because someone fucking told you it wasn’t lady like.  Swearing increases your ability to withstand pain and you are seen as more trustworthy if you do it.  So just fucking do it.

11. Following rules is something you need to know when to do and when not to do.  Pick your moments carefully.

She feels the breeze caress her face

Raising her head towards the sky

Letting the sun rays gently warm her skin.

Strands of hair lightly move as the breeze winds through them

 

She stares to the horizon.

Hills, big sky, silence

Listening the sound of nothing

It clears her mind

 

Taking in a breath , she feels the cool on her lungs

Exhaling rids her of the stresses of her life.

This is her peaceful place

The place of her solitude.

 

Looking at the paddock where he is

She spies that magnificent animal

The presence, strength, peace within

She feels the gratitude swelling in her that he is hers.

 

No place is like this.

There is no hustle and bustle.

Just a quiet solemnity that is all hers

And she drinks it in

 

Cows graze, birds fly, crops grow

And he looks up from his daily feeding

He begins to move away,

Walking silently.

 

 

Then he gathers speed

She is in awe of him

The power of his muscles move in grace and flow

Her eyes follow every stride.

 

Taking in breath again

She tells herself how blessed she is

Under this tree, the power of the sun

Old buildings, rustic and rugged

 

Getting herself up she goes to him

His breath heavy from running

She buries herself in his scent

And runs her hands over that splendid body

 

She whispers that she’ll love him always

Forever in her care

And nothing or no-one

Will separate her from her magnificent horse

Any normal day would have seen me grumpily staring into the void of drizzle and grey outside. Somehow I woke up different and when I looked outside I was instantly aware of the subtle diffused light glinting on the many raindrops on the window. I watched as one particularly large drop slid along the surface, collecting and merging with the smaller drops around it, gaining momentum and exploding into the window frame.

The crystalline silver drops glimmered and sparkled as a lone ray from the sun shone through the gloom. The dust in the air, that so often triggered my allergies, hung like delicate dancers in the ray of light, slowly twirling and gaining speed and uplift as a gust of breeze blew from under the door.

I was entranced at the spectacle of all the little miracles around me that I would normally never notice or alternatively brush aside as an irritant.

What had triggered this complete change in mindset?

Thinking back across my previous day, I attempted to backtrack to recall any significant point that stood out as odd or somehow wonderful. Nothing instantly sprang to mind.

Was it my meal? It had been just the usual during these glum times, a basic pumpkin soup and tough dry crusty bread. No energy for anything more than that. Intriguing not to know where this remarkable change of heart derived from.

Even my dreams held no clue as to what had caused this shift in perspective. Suddenly everything that I saw around me held the most curious interest and wonder.

There was no sign of grumpiness or discontent. There was a deep sense of absolute contentment within my heart, as if a golden sun shone there instead of the usual black cold stone. I was elated. A part of me realised that I should be concerned at the why, how and where of this feeling, however I was enjoying the experience of loving my life in all of its imperfections.

I hoped that I could remain in this heaven, rather than return to the doldrums of my confining Hades. Perhaps like Persephone, I had escaped hell with the budding of the blossoms to a spring of my opening soul.