Divine

Divine brings the body of the famous drag queen, Divine, into the domain of stillness by capturing the performer in a position typical of a body at rest or a body in death. Significantly, Divine is pictured here without any of the trappings of his famously outlandish drag persona—he has no wig and is wearing minimal, if any, makeup. This distinct lack of physical adornment throws into relief the quietness or neutrality of Divine’s expression; his face has a washed-out quality, more like the blank masks from the catacombs (see Peter Hujar’s Palermo Catacombs #10 (Girl with Flowers) 2014.408) than the lively visage of an exciting performer. The deathly associations generated by his recumbent pose dominate the overall effect of the image. Hujar’s Divine demonstrates one way a photographer might exploit particular qualities of the medium—here, its potentially deadly stillness—as well as the particular characteristics of a sitter to create a portrait.