Charles Eisenmann, Monsters of the Gilded Age.

Looking into the subject of traditional circus 'Freaks' i have came across a photographer named Charles Eisenman who shot human oddities in the 1880's.

In 1979 Eisenmanns book, Monsters of the Gilded Age, was published. This work was mainly focused on the genetic abnormalities of the 'Freaks' from the Barnum and Bailey circus. This was popular at the time due to the Victorian society's fascination with people with body disfunctions. Many photograhers were rushing at the opportunity to shoot the 'Freaks' as it was thought as quite comical and interesting. Many of the 'Freaks' were alienate from society as they were all taken away from normal Victorian society and chucked into the circus as its the only form of employment they could get.

Eisenmann did i feel shoot them in an objective perspective, where he took away all emotion surrounding the matter of body disfunctions. Eisenmann appeared to isolated them from mainstream society and placed them almost in a form of underclass culture, supplying us with the view that they are only there to look at, they do not have any human value or rights.

Although the photographer can remove emotions from the photo, stop chances of sympathy, they cannot in my opinion, ever control an open response to an image. Although a photographer can apply their personal thoughts and feelings of a subject matter into their own work and can provoke certain response's, taking away emotion is almost impossible due to the level of shock or fascination towards an image, especially photographs like Eisenmanns.

I do feel as if this is something i would like to play with throughout my brief, stripping away emotion. This due to it being so unatural, a human desensitized to all emotion is no human at all, our emotions and feelings are what make us individuals, without them we would just be robots of society.

More of Eisenmanns work from theMonsters of the Gilded Age :

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