Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and Other Traveling Troupes

Michal Chelbin
9781597110563 / 1597110566       
Strangely Familiar

Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and Other Traveling Troupes

Michal Chelbin
9781597110563 / 1597110566       
Publisher Aperture 2008
Edition Hardcover , 122 pages
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Publisher's description

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.

Specifications

Book title Strangely Familiar
Subtitle Acrobats, Athletes, and Other Traveling Troupes
Photographer Michal Chelbin
ISBN 10 1597110566        / 1-59711-056-6       
ISBN 13 9781597110563 / 978-1-59711-056-3
Publisher Aperture
Publish date Apr 2008
Publish year 2008
Book format Hardcover
Pages 122 pages
Number of photographs 22 black & white and 33 four-color images
Color or b/w photographs colbw
Dimensions 24,25 x 28 cm / 9.5 x 11 inches
Book designer Francesca Richer

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