David, 2007
The social conventions of group portraiture inform Badach's photograph of David. Posing on the couch with three of his creations, David appears to viewers as part of an alternative family—a feeling strengthened by the vague resemblance between the puppet-maker and his creations. The soft smile on his lips, however, renders his status in this family slightly ambiguous. Do we see a father and his children, with resemblance carried on through generations, or are we instead privileged to see a man and his alter-egos, some form of exteriorized versions of himself? Regardless of how we answer that question, what do we as viewers make of the macabre overtones of the puppets themselves? The liveliness bordering on garishness of the puppets' faces contrasts strongly with David's own muted expression, but Badach insists that she is not making fun of her sitters, and suggests that any discomfort viewers feel derives from recognizing in the men parts of themselves with which they are not entirely comfortable. She points to the long tradition of the grotesque, once celebrated as an integral part of artistic culture, but increasingly sidelined by a society in which illness, deformity, and death have become taboo. The framing of the composition, in which two additional puppets observe the main grouping from their reflection in the mirror, may act as a metaphor for the distance we try to put between a comfortable sense of self on the one hand, and a complete awareness of the many conflicting aspects of our identity on the other.
The domestic setting of these portraits gives the series an added charge. Badach refers to it as a wider metaphor for the internal life of a man, both a refuge and a prison, where people get back in touch with themselves by eliminating human contact and depriving themselves of an emotional connection with the outside world. Entering into that space to photograph it, Badach is acutely sensitive to her outsider status. "The decor of the spaces is so profoundly personal, that at times it feels like you are standing in someone else's skin, a space too uncomfortable for anyone other than the bachelor to occupy," she writes. Her texts complement the photographs. Just like the men's spaces, the voice used to write them is a highly personal one that suggests aspects of the bachelor-photographer encounter that are not recorded by the camera. Each image is the product of an experience, the emotional tone of which is defined by the interaction of two sensitive beings.
