Gillian Laub, Kinneret, Tel Aviv, January 2004. Chromogenic print, 30 x 40 in. Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery. © Gillian Laub.

I chose this image because it disturbs me. I am unnerved by it. It’s unusual for an image to have this effect on me. My relationship to images is much more analytical. My mind can’t process what I’m seeing in this picture so I move to feeling. I don’t want to understand my reaction. It’s uncomfortable to think about what I’m seeing in this instance. It’s the uncanny quality of this image. I understand this is a human being but she appears to be something else as well. The covering that protects her body makes her appear as something else to me. She is doll-like. At the same time her expression seems to say so much. She has accepted this horror. She’s still here. The person is visible in that devastated body and she is willing to let herself be seen. I find her incredibly sexy.

Judie Bamber, Artist

Michal Chelbin, Magamed Russia, 2007. Chromogenic print; 37 x 37 in.

Chelbin took this portrait in 2007, while shooting in a wrestling club in The Ukraine. The young wrestler has just finished a hard training session. He is not looking at the camera but his gaze seems to be so focused that he appears to be in a state of hypnosis. He looks alert, ready to act, yet almost unaware of the camera. It is a moment of surrender. Like many of Chelbin’s photographs, it carries a strange, enigmatic feeling and conveys seemingly contradictorycharacteristics, such as youth and manhood, strength and weakness, masculinity and femininity, and tenderness and brutality.

This portrait is included in Chelbin’s monograph The Black Eye, which was published in the fall of 2009 by Twin Palms Publishers.

Danny First, Contemporary Art Collector