“Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in part through its unsharability, and it insures this unsharability through its resistance to language.” - Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Where verbal and written language fails, perhaps the image, the visual, may succeed.
Throughout her undergraduate work, Hemler sought to find an affective means of communicating about her physical experience, particularly the experience of chronic pain. Hemler used the prompts she received in her courses to explore how she could use the visual language of photography to share her reality of “invisible” pain the emotions associated with it.
From the artist:
The disability community is not homogeneous. The idealized, pitiful, and inspirational disabled character that mainstream culture perpetuates erases the true diversity that exists within this most populous minority. With this body of work, I aim to create portraits that give power to the ways that my subjects deviate from what is expected of a disabled person. Each subject identifies as having a physical or mental disability, learning disability, sensory impairment, chronic illness, chronic pain, or is similarly affected by ableism. It is not necessary for the viewer to understand the intricacies of each person’s illness, injury, or disability. But it is essential for the viewer to be confronted by the reality of each subject’s radical existence in whatever form that may take. Our survival depends on challenging assumptions of what Disability is and how we live our lives.
I make each portrait using a 4x5 view camera and color film. The slow process of setting up each image allows me to talk with my subject and help them feel comfortable on the other side of camera. I process the film myself and scan it. I then edit and print digitally. Working in this way forces me to slow down and make portraits that provide each subject with an opportunity to be seen in a way contrary to the way that disabled people are usually are. My intention is to undermine abled people’s instinct to stare with pity, shock, or disgust, and instead force them to see each subject as a complete human being.
The title of the work, Be My Body, Read My Books, is derived from the song “Spasticus Autisticus” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.
Hello to you out there in Normal Land
You may not comprehend my tale or understand
As I crawl past your window give me lucky looks
You can be my body but you'll never read my books
Written as an “anti-charity song” in response to the dreadfully misguided International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981, The BBC banned the song for its crude lyrics. However, it continued to be celebrated as a battle cry within the disability community.
As a disabled artist, I have found it very empowering to make work that references my personal experiences with pain and ableism. In this work, Be My Body, Read My Book, I seek to understand how others find power through rejecting pity and other societal limits on how a disabled person is allowed to exist.
A selection of some of Hemler’s current diaristic work.