Barbara Hammer: Sanctus

Barbara Hammer’s experimental film Sanctus depicts human bodies at risk. It features archival moving X-rays taken by doctor and filmmaker James Sibley Watson Jr. (1894–1982) of people making simple gestures and engaging in everyday activities: applying lipstick, drinking liquids, shaking hands, and shaving. Hammer rephotographed the original film and spliced the images together in a visceral montage set to overwhelming requiems by Neil B. Rolnick. She further transformed the X-rays with flashes of light, hand-painted colors, and other visual effects and by speeding up, looping, and reversing the movements. In presenting images captured by medical technology that uses large amounts of radiation, Hammer underscored her idea that “science advances through the demise of animal, including human, subjects in experiments” and that imaging, and even treatment, can cause harm. Sanctus emerged from Hammer’s initial engagement with medical themes, an interest incited in the early 1980s by the AIDS epidemic. Over the course of her 50-year career, Hammer worked in photography, 16mm film, and video with an unflinching focus on queer communities and on her encounters within the American medical system.