Empathy

A new subject beginning in the fourteenth century, the Pietà (Italian for “pity”) represents the Virgin Mary holding her dead son, Jesus, in her lap. This scene is not found in the Gospels but was one of a number of new themes in Christian art intended to encourage meditation, convey pathos, and provoke a profound emotional response in the viewer. Adding to its emotional immediacy, it echoes images of the Virgin cradling her child. The development of the Pietà parallels the rise in mystical literature of the time and responds to individual aspirations for a personal relationship with God.

Conversation prompts

• Consider the subtractive medium of wood carving compared to the subtractive medium of stone carving. What naturalistic details do you notice in the carving of Jesus’s dead body? What effect do these have on the viewer?
• How do you read the relationship between Mary and Jesus through the positioning of their bodies?

Following the French invasion of northern Spain in the spring of 1808, the Peninsular War subjected the Spanish people to six years of cruelty, terror, and extreme privation. Grief-stricken, Goya undoubtedly began work on his Disasters of War etchings following the siege and ultimate capture of his boyhood city of Zaragoza from December 1808 through February 1809—a notoriously brutal battle in which some 50,000 Spaniards died. By 1814, Goya had completed fifty-six of the eighty plates he ultimately created for Disasters of War, but in the repressive political climate that followed the reinstatement of absolutist monarchy under Ferdinand VII, the series remained unpublished during the artist’s lifetime. Ultimately, the plates were acquired by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1863, when they were published for the first time.

Conversation prompts

• Compare the viewer’s gaze in looking at this work and the soldier’s gaze directed toward the hanging man. Is the viewer’s gaze voyeuristic? Why or why not?
• Does this representation of human suffering cause an embodied experience for the viewer? If so, through which details?
• Goya’s Disasters of War etchings have been described as laying the groundwork for later iconic representations of war, including Picasso’s Guernica and documentary war photographs. Which stylistic elements in Goya’s composition might be described as shockingly modern?

Fazal Sheikh, Class of 1987, is a socially engaged documentary photographer known for his poignant black-and-white portraits of displaced persons. He aims to create “simple, direct, and respectful” images that are often modulated by accompanying texts drawn from Sheikh’s extensive interviews and conversations with his sitters.

Beloved Daughters is a project based on Fazal Sheikh’s research for his books Moksha (from which these photographs originate) and Ladli. The project uses images and texts to document cases of ill treatment and abuse suffered by women of all ages in India. One thousand sets of Beloved Daughters, with texts in English and Hindi, were distributed to charities and non-governmental organizations across India working for the rights of women. It is the artist’s hope that the project would be used in support groups, hospitals, and local communities.

Conversation prompts

• How might you relate Sheikh’s works to the tradition of portraiture?
• How do the accompanying texts change the effects of the photographs?
• Did Sheikh manage to avoid the problematic power dynamic between artist and sitter that is often found in documentary photography? Why or why not?

In 1975, when he was 13 years old, Fosso set up his Studio Photo Nationale in Bangui, Central African Republic. At his commercial photography studio, Fosso specialized in passport, portrait, and wedding photography, promising clients that they would be “beautiful, elegant, and easy to recognize.” However, Fosso soon turned his camera on himself, “taking self-portraits simply to use up spare film; people wanted their photographs the next day, even if the roll wasn’t finished, and I didn’t like waste. The idea was to send some pictures to my mother in Nigeria, to show her I was all right.” As he experimented with self-portraiture, he began to adapt different personas. “Then I saw the possibilities. I started trying different costumes, poses, backdrops. It began as a way of seeing myself grow up, and slowly it became a personal history – as well as art, I suppose.” Many of Fosso’s self-portraits are acts of political defiance, but they are also deeply linked to the photographs of his clients; they transform the studio into a theatrical space, in which Fosso and his sitters take control of their identities, and even reinvent themselves for the camera. 

 Conversation prompts

• What is the relationship between the figure and the setting? What does the location of the camera, the framing of his body, the posture, and clothing convey?
• Is there any aspect of this photograph that indicates that it is a self-portrait? If so, how?
• How would you describe the use of the bouquets that Fosso holds?
• Does your perception change if you learn that the bouquets of flowers are made of paper?
• What does it mean to exchange a glance with a sitter in a portrait? Do you feel connected to Fosso?