From the Study on Post Pubescent Manhood


  • Photographer
    Stacy Kranitz
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    Stacy Kranitz
  • Date of Photograph
    2013

I went searching for displays of violence that function as catharsis. The photographs culminate as an unwieldy archive. I think maybe if I have enough evidence that violence can function as an emotional release I can validate behavior that might at first glance seem unbecoming.

Story

At dawn, I meet up with kids that have been up all night partying, when the beautiful dawn light combines with a zombie-like state of being, induced by all night drug use. It was in this moment that I met Scott. After meeting him, I moved away to photograph others. Soon after, a firecracker went off and someone started screaming. I noticed that it was coming from Scott, standing 30 feet away.

As I got closer, it became apparent that Scott had blown off part of his hand from holding a lit mortar. He was covered in blood and in a state of shock as his friends and I gathered around. I called 911 and asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance. Then I began taking pictures. I just happened to do something useful before picking up my camera to photograph his decimated hand. By 7:30 a.m. he was on his way to the hospital, in stable condition but missing two fingers; the light had lost its beauty. I went to bed.

For the past five summers, I’ve attended a weekend-long party on a rural piece of property in Rutland, Ohio. The place itself is hard to define; it has been compared to a commune and a dystopian compound.

I came to Skatopia searching for displays of violence that function as catharsis, as a part of a larger body of work that explores subcultures that self-consciously dramatize violence through rituals, habits, and pastimes. In performing these behaviors in front of the camera, the participants thereby implicate the photographer and viewer as consumers of that violence.

I awoke late that afternoon to find everyone begging to see pictures of Scott’s bloody hand. This tragedy had become a defining event for everyone there that weekend, and I could not fault them for their obsession. This is what my photographs are about: fetishizing violence. It is only natural that they, like me, desire to see, have and share the image of his hand, as a way to embed themselves as witnesses and participants, to say that they were there. In seeing it, they were part of this event that included his hand being blown off. The appeal: “My hand could have exploded, but it didn’t, his did.”

I went through the photographs I had made from the weekend. There was something so vulgar about the disembodied bloody hand excommunicated from its context. It left no room for the cathartic relationship to violence I seek to romanticize. I found an image I had taken of Scott’s friend embracing him while he was in shock. In this image the viewer is confronted with an intense display of emotions disconnected from the tragedy. I add the image to my collection. I now have this haunting and unwieldy archive of violent images that function as catharsis. I continue to accumulate these images. I think maybe if I have enough evidence that violence can function as an emotional release I can validate certain behavior.

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