Lorenza Böttner, 1959-1994²

Stark naked, Lorenza felt chilly and exposed. She was used to working nude: showing her armless body, one also in transition from male to female, was her way of inventing a narrative, or inverting it, creating a space for herself in the world. Even so, the scrutiny could feel awkward.

Lorenza’s interest in the mythology of “freaks” was about reclaiming and recognizing their humanity. She positioned herself among the sideshow specimens, pushing the boundaries of public perception and refusing the othering of disfigured or damaged bodies. She modified herself as she saw fit, insisting on visibility, documenting the transformation imposed on her by fate: as a young boy in Chile, she had sought out a bird’s nest and in an instant touching live wires had lost both of her arms. Later on, she began navigating becoming female, as a self-created sculpture. Lorenza used her feet and mouth to create statues of herself as Venus de Milo, but she was also performing and enacting this embodiment in real time, as a living work of art.

Joel-Peter was a well-known photographer who staged studio scenes after famous historical paintings. There was a twist: while he was a man intact, he had an appetite for models who weren’t. Sometimes, he even worked on still-lifes with body parts borrowed from labs or Mexican morgues. He said he saw the full range of life and death as beautiful.

Lorenza shared his vision, so she had agreed to pose for him. Still, bare and shivering, she couldn’t help feeling there was something fetishistic in his aesthetic interests. Her read on this Witkin artist was that he had a bit of a savior complex. “I love the unloved,” he had stated in one of his program catalogues. It made her uneasy. Is this how he saw his subjects, as someone only an artist could love?

In contrast to his intense and edgy work, Joel-Peter was affable and warm, scurrying around the studio in his polka-dotted glasses with a pen in his mouth and a stack of antiquarian books in both hands. He arranged a skull on top of the books. Lorenza assumed it was real. He smoothed some velvet drapery under her feet, then returned to bunch them up. He fiddled with a veil over her face, then pulled it back to reveal her.

He was at turns completely immersed in his work, but he stopped frequently to chatter, asking Lorenza pointed questions about her art and her experiences and beliefs. He touched her only when she consented, not shying away from the stumps where her arms had burned away, arranging her this way and that. He knew a great deal about her art practice, the Venus sculptures and also the dance art she performed on the streets. She appreciated his interest and attention. Beautiful, beautiful, he said whenever she changed poses. Even as she was wary, she liked him.

Joel-Peter talked so passionately about the history of art, and about the possibilities of photography. His intelligence was something Lorenza admired and related to. She sometimes felt that an open mind was more isolating than defying gender norms or living without arms. She felt a glimmer of connection.

The camera clicked away. Lorenza stood the way the goddesses posed in old paintings, with strong, sensual curves, face turned to profile.

Beautiful, beautiful, the other artist kept saying.

They took a coffee break. She used her feet to cover herself in a soft blanket that Joel-Peter provided for her, and she helped herself to an orange in the same way. Witkin watched her peel it with fascination and amazement. He said that he read about her refusal to adopt prosthetic arms, her insistence to find her own way, the way she was. He asked her how long she had been sick. Lorenza replied that she was eight when she was electrocuted. But then she realized he meant something else. He was asking about HIV. Had he read about this, too, somewhere, or could he somehow see right through her?

She was naked again. The photographer had no boundaries.

Perhaps he was not different from the rest, after all, the people who fed on the misery of others. And she felt again the way she had always felt, no matter how much resilience she radiated. As if there was nowhere she could hide.

Bio: Lorette C. Luzajic