Joel Peter Witkin - Las Meninas

Similar to Velazquez's painting of Las Meninas, this is a photograph by Joel Peter Witkin called Las Meninas. This seems to be a more disturbing interpretation of Velazquez's painting, with his face smudged in black and facing directly towards the viewer. At first glance in appears that the girl in the foreground is sitting upon this weirdly shaped contraption, but I interpret it now as an exaggeration of the camel hump dresses women were made to wear during that time. It seems to be mocking that tradition. The girl having no legs is just another example of how young girls were molded to dress and be a certain way and they didn't have control of who they were to become. Another interesting thing I noticed was that the king and queen of Spain that Velazquez was supposed to be painting remain in a content and still  pose with no expression on their faces. I feel that is another mock towards the royal tradition and how in most pictures or portraits of the royal family, they are depicted with no emotion. Even with all the chaos going on in the foreground and middle ground of this photograph, the king and queen remain in that same pose. In the original painting by Velazquez, the dog is being poked in the back by a little girl, I think in this photograph the dog being attached to a long rope being held by the girl is a symbolism of that torture. It seems that Witkin was going for a less formal interpretation of the painting he based this photograph off of, and also mocking a little bit of the royal tradition.