I hope you’ll be a regular reader. One could say that the picture performs its punctum in a dramatic suspension of the timeframe of immediate experience of reality.6 The presence of say Tarkovsky’s son Andriousha both in the world and in the image simultaneously performs in its purest sense the underlying ontological basis of the photographic image as a confirmation of conditional temporality and death.7 Investigating Tarkovsky’s own reflection about the relationship of images with death appears all the more surprising in this Bazinian framework. If you’d like to explore the world of Tarkovsky further, Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids and Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art are available here or in your local bookstore. For a further discussion of this issue, see also: Bird, Robert. As I have argued, Tarkovsky uses the very characteristics of the medium to the advantage of what I would call a subversive affect by means of visual romanticism. It is as though Andrei wanted to transmit his own enjoyment quickly to others. Indeed, Tarkovsky took these pictures shortly before he left for Italy, never to return. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. 125+ Gwarlingo readers have contributed so far and $12,000 of the $15,000 goal has been raised. Simmel, Georg. A short while ago I was reading another good piece about film and photographs in Poetry magazine. Groys, Boris. your own Pins on Pinterest Thanks so much for the heads up. According to Tonino Guerra, who worked as a screenwriter for both directors, Antonioni often used a Polaroid camera himself The remaining photographs unfortunately remain inaccessible for scholarly research, as does the rest of Tarkovsky’s personal archive up until today. Unlike the Russian series, these Polaroids feature an absolute absence of domestic harmony, and instead show rather edgy and sometimes even formalist views of hotel rooms, overexposed window frames, and small still lives with personal relics. See also Mitchell, Tony. While using his Polaroid camera, the photographer’s vision is divided between the moving bodies of reality and the fixed still image. To many writers and critics, this decision appeared at odds with Tarkovsky’s profound Russianness, and one indeed wonders how precisely Tarkovsky could have been able to find creative asylum outside of his beloved Russia. Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Using the example of Andrei Tarkovsky, I wish to address questions of the ontology of the Polaroid picture as an immediate imprint of reality and its power as a medium for nostalgia, and, with regard to Tarkovsky’s work, also as a medium with subversive affect through the aesthetics of visual romanticism. The impossibility of inhabiting the world has moved from an ontological to a representational level in the subjects Tarkovsky chooses to portray. Introduction of the Polaroid to the Art World A. André Kertész (1894‐1985) B. Andrei Tarkovsky C. Walker Evans 2 V. Conclusion VI. Indeed, from when Michelangelo Antonioni first gave Andrey Tarkovsky the Polaroid camera as a gift, in the 1970s, it rarely left his side. Via John […], […] lastly, even Andrei Tarkovsky’s Polaroids were stunning. “Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and this is precisely what he wanted: stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots.” Guerra, Tonino. I wonder what he would have made of […], […] The Polaroids of Andrei Tarkovsky. Nostalgia for us Russians is not a lighthearted, positive emotion as it is for you Italians, but a kind of mortal illness, a profound compassion which is not so much bound up with deprivation, loss, or separation as with the suffering of others, which draws you closer to them through an emotional link. In that period, Tarkovsky was able to build an Italian-Soviet coproduction structure in order to make Nostalghia, his first film shot in Western Europe. Andrei Tarkovsky’s use of the Polaroid camera during the period of his exile is exemplary for an affective use of the medium. Barthes, Roland. INTRODUCTION The Polaroid camera produces instant photographs. In an interview with an Italian newspaper, he elaborates this point: The film expresses a feeling which is deeply rooted in myself, and which I never felt so strongly before I left the Soviet Union. However, it should be noted that Tarkovsky never seemed to have had the intention to include his Polaroid snapshots in his work as an artist and filmmaker – even though the repeated artbook publications and exhibitions (which all happened posthumously) might suggest otherwise. Time within Time: The Diaries, 1970-1986. In my opinion events of our everyday lives are much more mysterious than those we can witness on screen. The Polaroids of Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979-1983 VOL. Here is Tarkovsky explaining artistic approach to filmmaking: I think people somehow got the idea that everything on screen should be immediately understandable. PO Box 52 . According to Tonino Guerra, who worked as a screenwriter for both directors, Antonioni often used a Polaroid camera himself while location scouting in Uzbekistan.1 Polaroid – being one of the flagship products of American consumer culture-, struggled with its image as a medium for amateur photography, and it might appear remarkable that both Antonioni and Tarkovsky – filmmakers with an extreme attention to cinematographic purity – were drawn to this popular and relatively cheap medium. The Polaroid’s immediateness, its physical uniqueness, and its ethereal image quality are responsible altogether for creating emotional depth and even spiritual evocation. Instead of depth and resistance, digital photography advocates a paradigm of wide availability and purely formal nostalgia, thus undoing the ontological power of the Polaroid picture by an unjust use of its aesthetic features. From 1999-2012 I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s oldest artist colony, but I've also done time at an arts magazine, a library, an art museum, and a raptor rehabilitation center. According to Svetlana Boym’s recent book The Future of Nostalgia, the preservation of ruins in their state of decay corresponds to the aesthetics of what she calls reflective nostalgia, that is: nostalgia of an allegorical nature, in which the translation of identity and the displacement of culture is impossible.16 As Georg Simmel has pointed out in his essay on the allegorical trope of the ruin, the ruin brings to life the intimate struggle of the ‘Willen des Geistes’ (will of the spirit) with the ‘Notwendigkeit der Natur’ (necessity of nature), thereby stressing the tragic dominance of nature over architecture.17 Ruins indeed already featured abundantly in Tarkovsky’s earlier films, most prominently in Stalker. cit., p. 7. A beautiful collection of Polaroid photographs (portraits and landscapes) taken in Russia and Italy in the late 1970s, early 1980s by the great Russian filmmaker. In that sense, he is a thoroughly romantic artist. As the Russian Polaroid series relate to the orthodox icon in being an imprint of a prototypical vision of divine harmony, the Italian series function as anti-icons, or Gegenbilder, circumscribing lost unity by its absolute absence in the image. Andrei Tarkovsky's Polaroid photographs to be auctioned Haunting images shot by Solaris director in Russia and Italy to be sold at Bonhams and could fetch up to £500,000 «Есть вещи важнее, чем счастье». 12-okt-2018 - Bekijk het bord 'Tarkovsky's Polaroids' van Leen De Vos, dat wordt gevolgd door 126 personen op Pinterest. The Russian pictures breathe the fresh air of pastoral harmony. Again, thank you, and thank you for Gwarlingo! Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979-84 © Андрей Тарковский/Ultreya, Milano With the discovery and digitisation of a cache of his personal polaroids, we gain access into the luminous world of Andrei Tarkovsky... August 20, 2013 This notion forms a major contradiction Tarkovsky-scholars struggle with up until today, and was first identified in Jameson, Frederic. Gwarlingo, founded by Michelle Aldredge, features exciting finds in contemporary art, as well as advice about living the creative life. The Polaroid of the dog with the mist quietly falling upon the ground is a very natural expansion of Stalker ’s world at least in an obvious visual sense. This excerpt from the introduction of Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids written by Tonino Guerra describes Tarkovsky’s fascination with the Polaroid: At my wedding in Moscow in 1977, Tarkovsky had a Polaroid camera in his hand and he moved about happily with this instrument which he discovered only recently. ), op. It’s a piece by V. Penelope Pelizzon titled: Light Speaking: Notes on Poetry and Photography. This issue was already at stake in Tarkovsky’s debut feature Ivan’s Childhood; cf. Equally, rewarding cross-fertilization is apparent in the images that were taken in Italy while he was traveling with Tonino Guerra and preparing Nostalgia (1983). (Thanks to Sigrun Hodne who writes the Sub Rosa blog in Norway for alerting me to Tarkovsky’s still images). The post quotes Tarkovsky’s friend Tonino Guerra, remembering the auteur’s Polaroid period: “In 1977, on my wedding ceremony in Moscow, Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid camera. As the series of Polaroids made in Russia show, there is an immediate relation between Tarkovsky’s emotional life and the aesthetic paradigms to which he commits himself. It is the thing that ‘strikes’ the eye and creates a subjective, often emotional relation between the beholder and the image. Tarkovsky pensó mucho sobre el "vuelo" del tiempo, y quería conseguir una sola cosa: pararlo —aunque solo fuera por un instante, en las imágenes de la Polaroid». Instead of selling out to advertisers, I’m “selling out” to my readers instead! Discover (and save!) I sent a link to my son who has just started film school. He and Michelangelo Antonioni were my witnesses at the wedding, and as the custom then, it fell to them to choose the music for the band to play when the time came to sign the marriage certificate. Polaroid photos taken by legendary Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky will be auctioned at Bonhams in London this autumn. See also Bazin, André. Bright, Bright Day. Yet, their effect is further intensified. It succinctly offers a brief insight into the great man. To conclude, I wish to formulate some essayistic reflections about the current status of instant photography, and its function in contemporary visual culture. Whereas Bazinian photograpy theory has always assumed that the photographic experience functions as a dramatic reminder of temporality and death, Tarkovsky seeks to re-invigorate photography with the flavor of eternal life. “Andrei Tarkovsky and Nostalghia.” Film Criticism 8, 3 (1984), p. 2-11. Thanks for visiting. Tonino Guerra “In 1977, on my wedding ceremony in Moscow Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid camera. Tarkovsky started experimenting with the Polaroid camera in the late seventies, and was delighted with the results, although he immediately burned the Polaroids he was not happy with. Indeed, from when Michelangelo Antonioni first gave Andrey Tarkovsky the Polaroid camera as a gift, in the 1970s, it rarely left his side. As Tarkovsky’s use of the medium shows, a picture is not only its content, or its aesthetic aspects, but also its material process of coming-into-existence. Tarkovsky thought a lot about the ‘flight’ of time and wanted to do only one thing: to stop it — even if only for a moment, on the pictures of the Polaroid camera.” “Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. London: Reaktion Books, 2010, p. 12. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. “Surely Fades Away: Polaroid Photography and the Contradictions of Cultural Value”, Photographies, 1, 2 (2008), p. 221-238. In 2015 I was named a “Top 100 Artist, Innovator, Creative” by, Gwarlingo . Tarkovsky thought a lot about the ‘flight’ of time and wanted to do only one thing: to stop it — even if only for a moment, on the pictures of the Polaroid camera,” he continued. Tarkovsky-camera, the Almighty-auteur and the surveyed world a constant. The invention of the Polaroid camera was a big step in the advancement of photography. Therefore it is optimistic, even if in an intimate sense the artist is tragic.8. His wife Larisa, his son Andrei, and their dog Dakus play a central role here. I am truly sorry. ), op. Aesthetically, Tarkovsky’s Polaroids reveal a lot about the way he composed his images in his films. Elements of Cinema. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. The East European Film Bulletin is a journalistic and literary project dedicated to the criticism of films related to Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. But how does the Polaroid picture relate to Tarkovsky’s over-arching project to address questions of reunification and harmonization? Bibliography I. The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books, 2002, p. 12. The Man Behind… They raise the following key questions I intend to address here: why is it that Andrei Tarkovsky grabbed his instant camera to shoot pieces of daily life between roughly 1979 and 1983 – the period surrounding his exile in Italy? For a discussion of the amateur vs. fine art debate, see Buse, Peter. What affective state underlies Tarkovsky’s desire to “stop time” by means of snapshots, as Tonino Guerra put it?3 And what role does the specific image quality of Polaroid play in its affective mediation of reality? Besides the obvious political issues, Tarkovsky’s migration to Italy was also, and maybe most importantly, an emotional and aesthetic drama. It seems that, while framing the scene, Tarkovsky is more concerned with recreating an ideal image of ‘nature’ pre-existing in his imagination than he is with documenting the events of the day. From the nearly 200 Polaroid pictures Andrei Tarkovsky took between 1979 and 1983, only 60 have been selected from the archive at the the Instituto Internazionale Andrei Tarkovski in Florence and published by the Milan-based publishing house Ultrea.4 The first 27 were taken in Russia, chiefly in and around his country house in Myasnoe right outside of Moscow, whereas the remaining 33 had been shot in Italy during the preparations for Nostalghia. (retrieved April 2012). Great! While I was familiar with Tarkovsky’s films, I had never seen these luscious Polaroids taken by the director until today. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. “What is art?,” asked Tarkovksy. Tarkovsky also has a special skill in capturing photographs of places at certain times of the day meaning that they often resemble The Zone from Stalker. (One friend likes to call me “the arts enabler.”) The punctum, according to Barthes, is that element of the photographic experience which is not symbolic or representational, but purely singular. He had just shortly discovered this instrument and used it with great pleasure among us. So why amend the world? The concrete process of the chemical reaction to light is thereby essential to the revelationist potentials of the Polaroid picture. As argued in Boym’s account, Tarkovsky’s use of ruins creates an affective experience of historicity – a human, emotional link between history and geography.18 Tarkovsky’s series of Polaroids shot in Italy thus function as an immediate imprint of a state of lost unity, as allegorized in the ruin. Some additional Polaroids, however, have been published in Gill, Stephen (ed.). Thanks to all of the readers who have contributed to the Gwarlingo Membership Drive. Here Tarkovsky clearly states his deepest connection to death, and the restorative role he attributes to the creation of images. Already in Russia, Tarkovsky expresses a strong longing for a lost spiritual unity13 – placing himself in a longstanding tradition of modernist Russian authors such as Aleksei Khomiakov, Vladimir Solovev and Viacheslav Ivanov. Become a Patron! : Johnson, Vida and Graham, Petrie. His son, Andrei A Tarkovsky, explains the background to some of the pictures : … Its personal, yet cinematic quality is well suited to map Tarkovsky’s imagination on the new geographic givens of the Italian countryside. His careful eye is in evidence in these Russian and Italian landscapes with their deep shadows and glimmering sunlight, as well as in the intimate moments Tarkovsky captured with his wife, son, and dog. Kovács, András. Правила жизни и полароидные фотографии Андрея Тарковского Andrei Tarkovsky and Margarita Terekhova on the set of The Mirror. The often-stated argument that Tarkovsky desires to recreate Russia inside of the Italian context is contradicted by the fact that Tarkovsky’s Polaroid pictures have in large part lost its sense for harmonious romanticism. “Die Ruine. There’s absolutely no pressure to donate to Gwarlingo, but I appreciate the thought. Apr 28, 2019 - This Pin was discovered by Lily. His images were dreamlike and poetic although they portrayed common sights and people, leaving the melancholy of seeing things for the last time as they were. However essential, the framework of this article does not allow us to dig deeper into this fundamental problem of Tarkovsky’s cinema. And they feel like a fond farewell. The instantaneous process of the Polaroid picture literally turns the flow of the moment into a condensed double of reality. Andrei Tarkovsky. For a good introduction into the historical and sociological debates surrounding the Polaroid picture, see Buse, Peter. The melancholy of seeing things for the last time is the highly mysterious and poetic essence that these images leave with us. You can also follow Gwarlingo on Twitter and Facebook. As I have argued, Tarkovsky uses the very characteristics of the medium to the advantage of what I would call a subversive affect by means of visual romanticism. Rather then experiencing the slow appearance of the Polaroid image in the emulsion as the revelation of a new, potential world of harmony, these Polaroids become hard evidence of the ruined state of the nostalgic mind itself. As much as the Polaroids convey domestic harmony, they also express the melancholy of seeing something for the last time. Translated and published in: Aspesi, Natalia. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. As such, Tarkovsky creates a deeply affective geography of the Russian countryside, in which his inner ‘landscape’ communicates with the shape of the world.10 Tarkovsky’s affective and idealizing relationship with the geographic environment of the Russian countryside, also a primordial aspect in both Solaris and The Mirror, do not so much deliver a documentary image of his family life. Preparation for Nostalghia-, are no exception to this notion remaining photographs unfortunately remain for. Still images ) vs. fine art debate, see Buse, Peter believe in ( pay ) walls mediate. M very interested the arts more accessible Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky and tarkovsky polaroid camera! University Press, 1992, p. 387ff world it represents the set of chemical..., slightly overexposed quality of the readers who have contributed so far and $ of. Andrei Rublev, and they ’ ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it. ” dig into. 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