This book was born of two encounters. First, photographer Sylvie Huet’s encounter with the world of little people, then of that same photographer’s encounter with philosopher Michela Marzano, to whom she showed her work.
The brutal discovery of difference. The discomforting gaze. When faced with a dwarf, who isn’t destabilized, if only for an instant, who can truly say that they only see a somewhat-shorter-than-average person?
For three years, Sylvie Huet took pictures of these little people, with both artistic talent and a great deal of empathy and affection, and she invites us to share her gaze.
The texts by Michela Marzano, whose philosophical work is centered around the question of the subject and the body, resonate deeply with Sylvie Huet’s images, inviting us to consider what this difference produces, both on those who are marked by it and by those who observe it. Which inevitably leads to posing the question: who is normal, who is “the other”? And what is humanity, if it isn’t expressed in alterity otherness.

A dialogue between a photographer and a philosopher about the gaze we bring to be bear on those who are like us while also being different…