Uncool & In Distress

Sauna Portraits by Aaron Burgess

DON ABBOTT

Distress is a currency in common use in our times. Our mediated world serves up the survivors of war, plague and earthquake on a plate that seems to go unmerrily round and around. Academia, the fourth estate and even its victims are fluent in the vocabularies of trauma. Audiences are apparently well versed in how to absorb and respond to the experience of the distress of others.

Which makes the photographs of Aaron Burgess’s Heat Tonic so unsettling. The distress on the faces of the people in these images is evident and fascinating, but it is in fact manufactured—the result of a negotiation between the photographer and his subjects. ‘Spend as long as you can in a sauna until the experience begins to change,’ Burgess proposed, ‘and then let me capture your photograph the minute you emerge.’

Jockeys may be accustomed to the masochism of long sauna stays, but Burgess’s friends and acquaintances were not, and their expressions are a mix of physical and mental exhaustion that show them close to their edge. These are emotions that may be experienced in other images, but here they are distilled, stripped of an otherwise complicated context, and held up for study.

This becomes a multi-layered exploration of the genre of portraiture. The trust set up between Burgess and his subjects remains solid throughout the taking of the picture, allowing the complex relationship between portraitist and sitter to become evident. The former’s control here is even more total; the latter’s submission is more complete; the camera seems almost to disappear. The moment of release from the sauna’s heat is caught as pure, momentarily transformational. These images could stand for the elusive goal of all portraiture — to show the real person, to capture the true nature of the individual. Here, exhaustion has stripped his subjects clean — of their self-awareness, of their tendency to ‘look good’ and ‘pose’ for the camera — leaving behind the core of the individual, which, ironically, might just equate to their shell. Wearing only a towel or togs, without make-up, without combed hair, coated in a sheen of perspiration that makes healthy skin appear sallow, without a smile, even, Burgess’s sitters portray a rawness, a vulnerability and a rare moment of exposure that provides a unique and fleeting insight.

Published in issue 189, Autumn 2024