The Babies

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video

The Babies Details

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. FROM THE INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN SONTAG: “The title is The Babies. More than one. A group. A fellowship, it appears. More than one such fellowship or band or coterie. A world. A cunningly sequenced album of pictures inducts us into this world…. The photographer has penetrated a space where a secret identity unfolds. An intimate, private space, whose banal activities—yowling, drooling, eating, sleeping, bathing, masturbating—here acquire the character of weird rituals, because they’re being done by adult men dressed as, and carrying on like, babies…. It’s a long time that the camera has been bringing us news about zanies and pariahs, their miseries and their quirks. Showing us the banality of the non-normal. Making voyeurs out of us all. But this is particularly gifted, authoritative, intelligent work. Borland’s pictures seem very knowing, compassionate; and too close, too familiar, to suggest common or mere curiosity.… Here—says the book—is a specimen of behavior that has a legitimate claim on our interest and attention. The pictures register a truth about human nature which seems almost too obvious to spell out…but which has never received so keen, so direct a depiction.” —Excerpted from “Borland’s Babies,” by Susan Sontag in The Babies: Photographs by Polly Borland Read more

Reviews

As someone who has struggled most of my life with my own infantilism, it strikes a very deep cord to see such an affirmative piece of photographic work as Polly Borland's "The Babies." Susan's essay as well as Mark's introduction articulate that struggle in such a way that raises it above the usual terms of perversion and fetish onto a plain that makes those applications trivial.As one who dares to strip away the other labels that many of us aggressively strive for a men in this society including gender and sexuality, Adult Babies, rightly or wrongly, are striving to place it all in perspective. Comfort, security, and the desire for love are basic to human nature, something that so many of us are unwilling to give or even receive from others without assessing what their motives might be. Why should this be so?My Wittle Sissy Sisters and Brudders on those pages have exposed our greatest vulnerability, that fear of detection and rejection that underlies too many of everyone's actions today if they knew who "WE" really are. Took a great deal of courage even though there are thousands of Adult Babies and Diaper Lovers out there.Looking through any AB/DL roster of members shows you that less than ten percent actually engage in dialogue while the rest only come to read the words or view the photographs of others, so many faceless shots.Yes, it took a mountain of courage to waddle out from behind that computer screen into the light.Diaper Boy and Jambo salute you!