The Aesthetic of Decadence

(the Art of Miron Zownir).

A bleak reality in the nefarious corners of New York, Moscow and Berlin, is Miron Zownir’s testimony of a world in which the given norms of society are subverted, and the elements of carnival overflows into real life, rawness populated by prostitutes, homeless, transsexuals and freaks he met in the degenerated realities of every day seam to celebrate an eternal fête des fous¹⁸. There are some strong similarities with the work of Diane Arbus, in the choice of atypical subject. It’s interesting to make a comparison between these photographers and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of Grotesque¹⁹, (especially the ones portrayed by Zownir) in use of costume and the caricature of gestures, a tragic-comic aspect of reality. During carnival festivities everyone wears a mask to blend with the crowd, unless they want to show their real identity and walk around no wearing one. Is this what happens in real life? Do we have to wear masks to blend in?

Zownir brought the images of decadent close to man, gave them a form and established a link through the body and bodily life; Bakhtin has argued the decadence and grotesque bodily life, such as eating, drinking, copulating, and defecating, Mary Russo writes: "The images of the grotesque body are precisely those which are abjected from the bodily canons of classical aesthetics." ²⁰

Bakhtin saw Carnival as synonymous to transgression and as an occasion in which political, legal and ideological authority of both church and state are inverted which we can clearly see in Zownir’s work. There is a clear inversion of universal values that the photographer has captured in these moments in time; the power of an unconscious self-narrative is visible in every single subject which seams triumphant in its freedom, liberated from boundaries of fashion, culture, logic and social class. Diane Arbus and Minor Zownir gave us the possibility to forget about social borders or pigeonholing them in a photography genre, we can feel completely naïve in our judgment and opinion, and forget about the social constructs that further increase the limitation of our capacity as individuals in the society.

Minor Zownir has portrayed unpopular people who showed an easy openness of  “hyper-realistic” human condition; his work testimonies the radical sexual revolution that was happening in the seventies, is a documentary of the sexual freedom just before the AIDS epidemic shockingly started to expand in homosexual communities, and of another shocking truths of the period like the Neo-Nazi “white-power” groups that invaded the streets and carried on with their own idea of radicalism; they caused savage of transsexuals and prostitutes. He was part of that reality populated by ill prostitutes, detriment homeless and abused transsexuals, and an atmosphere of a permanent intoxication. Living in the lower East area of New York Zownir made connections with several underground clubs, where he was allowed to take photographs, to meet performers, artists and other subjects for his work. Zownir created a “no-limits” photography which slowly became the assertion of his own “intoxication” since he could not avoid to get involved with the delirium of that excess. The work of Zownir has an exceptional relation to the other subjects of this study; for example it is comparable to Diane Arbus for the authenticity and the personal involvement with the subject (see chapter two for further explanation), and for the accent that they both have given to social diversity. Unambiguous similarities are also notable with James Ensor’s theme of “the masquerade” even though in a very different way, considering that the people in these photographs have metaphorically “taken off their mask”, to show a vivid image of their authenticity. In 1995 Zownir went to Moscow, Russia's capital and fundamental economic and business centre. Following the end of the Soviet Union, Russia's human rights records were very poor and although the government has recognized the legitimacy of international human rights laws just recently, the respect of these rights are very still substandard.

This Zownir’s most poignant work in which the reality has shifted, from the social results of the American consumerism to the aftermath of the Russian abject poverty. Moskau is the image of insanity, anger, isolation and poverty, part Theatre of Cruelty, part Grand Guignol, is Zownir’s most poignant work; shifted from the photographs of the American life of the “Outsiders” to the aftermath of Russian political Abjection²¹.

18. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World. pp.7 (Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1984).

19. Bakhtin

20. Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity (New York: Routledge,   

      1995), page 8.

21. Julia Kristeva, Powers OF Horror: An Essay on Abjection. p.206

(images from http://www.mironzownir.com,  http://diane-arbus-photography.com/) 

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." 
Diane Arbus