Published in Eyemazing, summer 2011. For quoting please refer to the original.

PHYSICAL DWARFS VS. EMOTIONAL MIDGETS On Nicola Lo Calzos photographic cycle Morgante (2010) Ana Peraica

What seems to be a large difference between developed societies compared to the Other ones is their treating of own sub-consciousness, fear and attraction among others. In developed world we are thought how to act in such situations, not admitting how at the same time we are drilled and controlled by the prescribed mechanism of behaviour. But while we act the way we are supposed to, feelings stay prohibited. The suppression of feelings may occur with each contact with the unknown or rare, something we did not got used to in the world of stereotypes. So, albinos, giants, midgets can always strike us. If we would be forced to decode this strike, we would realise it is nothing but a fear of the nature, its variety... But the culture is there to control and suppress it, with cultural rules of behaviour, so each strike would stay back and suppressed. The more culture is developed, more rules of behaviour well find that would prevent us to face our own reception. We will remember many illustrations, narratives and memorable forms at our visit, than someone in original societies more connected to the nature would.

This would happen each time we meet a proportional person of a different size. Why I say proportional? Because, if we would recognize the error of disproportion, we would blame the sickness, not ourselves nor the power of nature itself, and with small unusually people it is precisely what we cannot.1 They are actually completely formed, but only they find themselves in the larger world, as we would actually be in a world of giants. Or; they are relatively wrong size in proportions to products of human culture, still not the nature itself. As, in the nature there is nothing that perfectly fits the human average size.

Achondroplasia dwarfism is described by dis-proportionality of small sized people. Clinicians prefer to use the term midget which has unfortunately came pejorative in popular culture.

Unfortunately, small people were often seen as evil in Western culture they werent fitting, even the ones that did not have the perfect measures of anatomy, biometrics, human design...2 Strangely enough, despite the fact our ancestors were much smaller than we are, fearful and condemning images of smaller people, described as evil and perverse, were inbuilt in popular culture every since the ancient Greek myths.3 They were more amplified during the times of Christianity absorbing various resources and developing schisms, which iek names perverse.4 One of perversities was still prohibited, the image of Adams first wife. According to various resources, she-dwarf was forgotten precisely for making a metaphysical riot via sexuality. She has managed to sexually control sexually the whole biblical universe, Devil himself including. Lilith moreover segregated own empire of Babylon, the place of Sodom and Gomorra. Around the Renaissance the mythical Babylon was said to be captured by a hero Orlando, assisted by a good companion, a giant Morgante. 5

But, away from legends recognizing evil dwarfs and good giants, around the same time Orlando was narrated, the very name of a giant Morgante was given to a real person, but satirically enough the person was a dwarf. One of five midgets was Braccio di Bartolo according to ones or Pietro Barbino according to others, serving for fun and amusement on the court of Cosimo I Medici. 6 They were a part of what latter cultures recognized and finally abandoned as the Freak shows. 7 In such sets historically individuals terrorised simply for being different. But, a narrative tells and many historical facts make evidences to it, Cosimo I found Braccio/Pietro personally important, so he commissioned portraits of him by few of court artists.8 In a public sculpture placed in Boboli Garden naked Morgante appears as Greek god of hedonism - Dionysus.9 And again, as in images of Lilith, we see a small person riding, but now it is a tortoise, an animal once serving as the explanation of the whole universe. In Giambolognas portrait, Morgante is riding even a more mythical being, the

Aside religious depictions, folk tales are as German Nibbelung or slavic folk myths also describe dwarfs as evil forces. Even more contemporary science fiction variants continue describing characters of the evil dwarf, as for example Tolkien's Lord of Rings. See further in: Claudia Cataldo Beyond Cute and Evil: How Dwarfs Reconfigure Boundaries of Sexuality, Identity, and Ability in Germanic Literature and Film (dissertation): Kingston, 2009 3 .See: Notes on Greek Dwarfs, American Journal of Archaeology V. 88 (July 1984) P. 391-2 4 See: Slavoj iek: The Puppet and the Dwarf The Perverse Core of the Christianity, MIT Press, 2003. 5 The tale was written in a satirical poem by Luigi Pulci: Il Morgante (1483) 6 See: Angela Oberer: The Midget Morgante, The Florence Newspaper, http://www.theflorencenewspaper.com/style-arts-a-entertainment/art/322-the-midget-morgante-.html,accessed: 13.3.2011.

See: Robert Bogdan: Freak show. University of Chicago Press, 1988. Similarly Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy has given a historical chance to his own favorite dwarf, in a portrait of Duke himself with his dwarf, made by Giacomo Vighi (1572)
8 9

Giorgio Vasary writes about the sculpture, naming Valerio Cioli (1529/30 1599) its author.

dragon.10 Till todays culture this idolatry of Italian humanism seemed weird, as small Morgante was constantly being given the power that no latter art gave to any dwarf. And we have learned by the tragedy of the civilisation only recently; when the third portrait of Morgante was found, under the cover of a moralising latter century image, this relationship between Cosimo and Braccio/Pietro Morgante was what we culturally prohibited. On a twosided painting of Morgante by famous painter Angolo di Cosimo Bronzino (cca.1553) was discovered the famous dwarf is represented from both sides of his body, naked. He resembles the prototypal Bacchus, the very force of irrationality.11

Around the same time the Bronzinos painting started touring, the exhibition of Nicola lo Calzo entitled the same, Morgante (2010), hit the road. Lo Calzos serial still was not representing the real person of Braccio/Pietro but plenty of other dwarfs. Still the relationship he has built was the same one the civilisation prohibited, the personal one of Cosimo and Braccio. In the cycle, always clearly named individuals, Fidel actor, Genevieve hairdresser, Kwedi actor, Serge dealer, Yoyo dancer, Lyne farmacist, have their own professions, and despite those professions are still connected to their performance in public, they are showing up not as a part of a freak show but as main figures would in a Western movie production. Notably all of them were recorded in Africa, which getting back to the beginning of this essay would be the Otherness of the civilised world. There dwarfs are still attributed demonic power, there are no assistances to their lives as on the West, but at the very same time something really looks different. These people act self-awarely. Watching a serial of Lo Calzos portraits, we can recognize the power of identity given to South African dwarfs is rather explicative they appear as they are, as people, with no insignia of power attached. They ride no dragons or tortoise, carry no eagles in their hands. They arent stripped naked and dehumanized, as Morgante was. Once being depicted as humans, which they surely are, they start appearing more natural than natural, or; more humans then humans, precisely for the reason - they act towards to explain they are, which no other subject represented on the photography does. All of them project the power themselves. They know the way they look like and moreover they direct it.

To understand the difference of representation of Morgante in painting and a cycle of Lo Calzo, we to step further and analyse differences of media. Only painting can depict the
10.

119.

Ref: Giambologna: Dwarf Morgante; 1561. Ref.: Agnolo Bronzino: The Dwarf Morgante Dressed as Bacchus (Pietro Barbino) 1550-1553

unreal, though the interpretation in photography still is capable of depicting surreal. This is clear once we compare photographs of dwarfs made by other photographers. There is a visible difference in camera angle, frame as well as a produced feeling between, for example, August Sander Midgets (1906), Bruce Davidson Dwarfs (50s) or finally Diane Arbus Mexican Dwarf (1970).12 Photography has commonly represented dwarfs on the abut of a social drama or as a central part of a social grotesque, being deconstructed by an inner report of a dwarf Tolouse Lautrec.13

But, this difference would be even larger once we take into the account a non-western dwarf. In Artstore Ive found another photographic depiction of dwarfs, dressed in traditional clothes of Ceylon, which is the place they were surely recorded, hugging each other protectively as being afraid of the photographer, who is the one obviously not belonging to their own society. Lo Calzos subjects are, to the contrary, neither tragic nor grotesque. They forward no fear of own but seem to aggressively project own identity inside the picture.

Portrait photography is a genre of a dialogue. Only professional models can be directed as objects, while others hardly withdraw themselves from the gaze. Usually they control the image, blocking it up with own shame or fear of uncovering it. They can also develop a supra-feeling towards the apparatchik, the photographer, as when being annoyed by the event of recording. But, none of this happens in a relationship of small people and Lo Calzo. His small people aren't controlling themselves but are rather having an uncontrolled projective identities, full and concentrated, acting directly towards the photographer they are actually actively seducing. And strangely enough what they push in front is the actual eroticism, which runs controlled in parallel to our depiction of Western myth; the naked Lilith, always naked Morgante.

There is a cultural point of Western interpretation which precisely calls up to this irrational fear and attraction towards dwarfs. Who has not recognized the hidden eroticism behind the tale on Snow-white and her seven dwarfs or the one of the Wizard of Oz? There are plenty of
12 See: Richard M. Payne. Fool's fire. Film Quarterly v. 46 (Spring 1993) p. 45-51; Carol Armstrong; Biology, Destiny, Photography: Difference According to Diane Arbus, October, Vol. 66 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 28-54; George Baker: Photography between Narrativity and Stasis: August Sander, Degeneration, and the Decay ofthe Portrait, October, Vol. 76 (Spring, 1996), pp. 72-113 13 Robert Jensens: The Photographic Grotesque, Exposure (vol 36, no 1(2)), p 43-52 For various legends on Tolouse Lautrec see Beatrix Nobis: Der Zwerg, Der Die Kurtisanen Liebte [The Dwarf Who Loved the Courtesans] Pan (Germany), no. 12, 1991, pp. 30-43.

eroticised images of dwarfs in movie culture which have forwarded the theme. Eroticised dwarf characters appear in Fellinis movies, Volker Schlndorff's Die Blechtrommel, Greenaway's 7 1/2. Lynchs Blue Velvet.. And in such a civilisation images of African dwarfs come in front, the culture of that has hidden the naked portrait of Morgante with a more moralistic one, to latter elaborate on more perverse elements of it.

SLIPPING INTO THE HISTORY But, aside letting himself to be caught inside the historical split of the explained and suppressed, Lo Calzo deals with this history itself in a quite technical way. The author records photographs in a film-based aesthetics, specific and recognizable 6x6 medium formats of Hasselblad, convincing us with inner media rhetoric. Visually these portraivts actually do belong to our own history, described by the history of the medium itself. Photographs are illuminated with precise element of historical strata (monochrome, highlight on magenta), belonging to our own museum of memories. They do not appear as a part of the history of the Other, which we expect to look always as the different one.

So, what we need to focus on, once seeing Lo Calzos African midgets serial, entitled Morgante, is precisely the gap between the seen and named, the gap between our own culture prohibiting and censoring the force of nature and the one in which they appear. 14 Only from there we can recognize the renaissance satire around the small Morgante was nothing but a fascination and attraction suppressed.15 Coming to the notion of suppressed, a key concept of the psychoanalyst who himself has died in a companion of one dwarf, we may conclude; if not being made conscious, they come back to the Western culture again. And that would again be the uncovering not of physical dwarfs but emotional midgets among us. 16

14 There are many depictions of dwarfs in Western history which are thus excluded from the interpretation, such as Diego Velasquez: A Dwarf sitting on the floor (1945) 15. See further: Susan Moore: Renaissance Man, Apollo (London, England) V. 173 No. 583 (January 2011) P. 823 16. See: Robert Cromie & Hy Roth: The LItle People, New York Everest House (1980)