'Thirty-Two Kilos': A Stark Look at Anorexia

"seriously these girls, if they were as skinny would either already be dead or would die very soon! Where is the point in being [skinny] when [you're] dead!!!!"

When creating the photographs (which feature her friends, not professional models), Thein worried about this very outcome.

"That's not what I wanted," she said. "It's important for me that if I show my pictures, there's a statement that it's a critical position and I don't glamorize anorexia."

Lynn Grefe, chief executive officer of the National Eating Disorders Coalition, calls pro-ana Web sites "competitive, sick environments" and points out that anorexia has the highest death rate of any mental illness.

"Those pictures, that's what they're aspiring to because they can never be thin enough," Grefe says. "It's not a mind-set that most people can even understand."

Miner -- who as a painter himself creates work that deals with gender and body issues -- hopes that tonight's conversation addresses the question of what responsibility artists have to their audiences. He doesn't think that Thein is accountable to the (mostly) young women on the pro-ana sites because "it would never end if we tried to censor what we put out there for their sake."

Thirty-Two Kilos, at the Goethe-Institut Washington, 812 Seventh St. NW, through March 6. Free. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Panel discussion is 6-8 tonight. RSVP to 202-289-1200 (Ext. 168) or rsvp@washington.goethe.org.