Elinor Carucci

Elinor Carucci is a Israeli photographer. She has several series, “Closer,” “Diary of a Dancer,” “Crisis,” “Comfort,” and “Pain.” Each of these series uses portraits to explore personal themes, such as family life, marital problems, or the chronic back pain she experienced for a year. Her portraits bring the audience into these personal situations and experiences. Her series “Closer” invades her family’s life. She photographs her family in intimate situations and different “home” moments, such as her grandfather in the shower, a finger with stitches, or a toilet filled with menstrual blood. This series is a magnification of the private life that strangers are not usually privy to. It’s uncomfortable and endearing.
Another series by Carucci, titled “Pain,” is composed of seven self portraits which detail her yearlong chronic back pain. In the portraits in which her face is seen, the pain is apparent. The portraits also documents the different ways which she uses to relieve the pain. The picture “Pain 11, 2003” doesn’t show Carucci’s face, however the pain, desperation, and despair in her pain is apparent. She is framed by walls on each side, isolating her body in the center of the frame. Her body is draped over a wooden pole balanced on each counter, with a saddle-like apparatus that supports her stomach. Her back fills the center of the frame, making it the focus of the photograph. Her spine meets her shoulders in an almost upside down cross. Everything comes back to her back, to the focus of her pain. Her back is not only the focus of the picture, but the most interesting part even apart from the concepts behind the photograph. The bumps of her spine, her back muscles, even the continuation of her neck from her hair hanging down out of the frame.


(Elinor's website: http://www.elinorcarucci.com/ Pain 11, 2003 is the last picture on this page: http://www.elinorcarucci.com/pain.html)