By Bill Stamets
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The nuns killed his desire to play the piano by whacking his knuckles whenever he hit a wrong note, but his mother nurtured other cultural pursuits. Skrebneski’s father, a mechanic for International Harvester, would stay at home while his mother dragged young Victor to the Dearborn movie house on Division. “My mother took me to see Laurence Olivier and what’s her name in Wuthering Heights practically every night for weeks. She loved it and schlepped me with her. She cried all the time. I was wiping her tears. As I’m watching her, I’m watching the movie. It was an enjoyable evening.”
Later he fell for William Powell and Myrna Loy in the “Thin Man” movies, which may have honed his eye for glamour. “That was the apex of luxe,” he says. “The beautiful New York penthouses and skyline and the beautiful clothes and great jewelry and the men always beautifully groomed and dressed. You never saw a bum sleeping on a park bench.”
But when he lets go, he embraces blur, harking back to his original pig-moon, and this former altar boy can scare himself with unholy specters. While shooting a series of male nudes inspired by the art of Francis Bacon, Skrebneski caught a model in midair stepping off a box. “He became Satan,” he whispers. “His foot turned into a hoof–I’m not kidding you–from the movement, it turned into a hoof. His hair became one big horn. His penis was round, coming back toward him. That was too maniacal, seeing the devil. Absolutely the scariest photograph I’ve ever done. I have no idea what it is, where it comes from, nothing. Things like that freak me out.”
