I thought it would be nice to go for a change of pace this weekend and talk about a lovely little book that is a seductive blend of poetry and photography by the Russian movie director Andrey Tarkovsky. The book itself is called Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids and, as is obvious, it contains polaroids shot by Tarkovsky in his later life. What makes it really come alive though is the blending of the small polaroid photographs with poetic musings, touching comments and delightful prose by Tarkovsky himself.

Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids

“Extraordinary….photographs in which the organisation of colour and light can only be matched by painters as precise as Vermeer. This is a real gem of a book” so says the quote from The Guardian newspaper on the inside cover leaf. I am not so sure about that to be honest but what intrigues me is that many of the sixty featured polaroids give me a similar feeling and sense of timelessness that I get when I watch his movies and this is especially so with the shots that are matched to the wonderful poetry and comments, that’s what makes the book so special to me.

I want to use this short article to try to bring out some of that sensibility of the search for spirituality and understanding that for me lies at the heart of Tarkovsky’s work and I will use the poetry with my selected shots although not necessarily following the book exactly. I hope that you will grant me this liberty.

“An image is an impression of the truth, which God has allowed us to glimpse with our sightless eyes”

As you would expect for a master film director, Tarkovsky has an unerring eye for light and form but I don’t think that’s enough in its own right otherwise we would just see interesting shapes. These small images go way beyond that and probe at something much deeper in our sensibilities. If I can recall correctly, when asked ‘what is art, Andrey?’ he immediately replied something like, ‘that is the wrong question, before that you have to ask what is the purpose of life’ he then went on to explain that he saw art as providing glimpses of spirituality, and truth in this imperfect world. I come adrift from him a little bit with this but thats for another article, for now its sufficient to say that Tarkovsky used his art as a framework for others to super-impose their realities and as some kind of sensory map in the spiritual search for purpose and meaning (please don’t confuse spirituality for religion although religious overtones and imagery are used extensively in Tarkovsky’s work)

‘I dreamt of the quiet monastery cloister
with its enormous ancient oak tree
Suddenly I became aware of a flame rising up
at a point among the roots,
and I realise that it is the flame
of many candles burning
in the secret underground recesses of the monastery
Two frightened nuns arrive.
Then the flame leaps high,
and I see that by now its too late
to put out the fire - almost all the roots
have become burning embers.
I am deeply saddened by this,
and I try to imagine
what the cloister will be like
without the oak tree:
it will be useless, meaningless, miserable.

Anyone familiar with Tarkovsky will know that he was extremely economical with his output and only made a handful of movies in his lifetime. Some of that in his early days was certainly down to the obstacles put in his way by the Russian authorities but I am also very fond of this seemingly innoucous little quote that for me explains a lot and is a good piece of wisdom for us as practicing photographers:

How does a project mature?
It is obviously a most mysterious,
imperceptible process.
It carries on independently of ourselves,
in the subconscious,
crystallising on the walls of the soul
that makes it unique,
indeed only the soul decides
the hidden ‘gestation period’ of that image
which cannot be perceived
by the conscious gaze.

I would strongly urge my photography friends to read and re-read this quote as I believe it contains a very simple but profound message.

It seems to me that what makes everything, and I mean every thing that Tarkovsky creates, says or writes, so critically important is that his whole life is about human spirituality, it is at the centre of his thinking and expression and that is what makes him so unique. Never once is humanity and spirituality secondary to anything else in Tarkovsky’s films, photographs or writings and that is what gives them an enduring power. Too often in this world we are bombarded with superficially exciting and stimulating music, imagery and text, almost always orientated on short term gratification and lacking any real sense of enduring ideas. Why is it in photographic terms that there are certain photographers that endure and their work can be looked at again and again? I personally believe that its because they are not interested in instant gratification, sensationalism or even personal fame, what drives them is their humanity and the need to express their search for human spirituality. I am going to take a chance here so please respect that this is only my personal opinion, many will disagree, but one good example of this was my recent visit to Salgado’s Genesis exhibition in Singapore. Make no mistake, this is grand scale stuff, heavily promoted, beautifully presented with hundreds of stunningly framed prints and all on the laudable theme of the preciousness of the earth and human culture. What was I left thinking after walking around the exhibition……..I can’t remember, I was bored with the sensory overload and had no sense of wonder, did not feel at any time that Salgado was trying to show me some humanistic, spiritual insight, instead I felt he was continually trying to show off with his technical expertise. I wouldn’t trade that whole experience with five minutes of Kind of Blue or a flick through a Nakahira book or ten seconds with a Rothko and I believe the reason for this is very simple, they don’t ‘show off’, they are not in the least concerned with ‘how good they are’ , they are not even that concerned with whether I ‘like’ what they have created or not, they are driven by an intense internal, soulful desire to give a glimpse of something that they know is there but ‘cannot be perceived by the conscious gaze’.

Devoid of spirituality,
art carries its own tragedy within it.
For even to recognise the spiritual vacuum
of the times in which he lives,
the artist must have specific qualities
of wisdom and understanding.
The true artist always serves immortality,
striving to immortalise the work
and man within the world.

I want to finish this look at Tarkovsky’s Polaroids with a little personal story. I was recently in the very beautiful town of San Quirico D’Orcia in Tuscany and one day while sitting in a local cafe with my friends Monia, Marieangela and Luciano we got around to talking about photographic influences and I had mentioned Tarkovsky when a local man said that he knew him and had helped him when he was filming Nostalghia nearby. Shocked at this incredible news I asked if we could go to see the places where the scenes were shot and a lovely local teacher, Sabrina offered to take us so I spent some time at the natural spring spa of Bagno Vignoni where many of the films crucial scenes were shot. I would love to be able to say that I found this to be an incredible, evocative experience but I didn’t. Without the magic of Tarkovsky’s insights and creative touch I just saw a very nice hot spring spa that didn’t have any of the emotional experience I had been hoping for and therein hopefully lies the lesson.

I will be eternally grateful to Sabrina for her kindness in taking the time to drive us around the locations and I will close with Tarkovsky’s shot from Bagno Vignoni and reiteration that this is not what I saw with my conscious gaze……………

Takuma Nakahira

As with last week I wanted to finish with a look at a favourite photo and this week its a reasonably well known one from Nakahira’s ‘For a Language to Come’ book.

Firstly, apologies for the poor quality of my snap of this classic, I couldn’t get rid of the glare from my window but I don’t think that would have troubled Nakahira in the least !!! The photo showcased this week is one that’s usually chosen in magazines or books when there is any discussion or review of his work and I think thats because on the surface its one of his most accessible shots. This I believe does it an injustice in a way because I think there is a lot more depth to it than it is usually credited with. Initially, I suppose its a most unusual composition for Nakahira in that its almost conventional with the two girls and the third sun face on the towel to add secondary interest. When you start to study the photo more deeply though there are a few things that begin to become more interesting. The photo itself dates from I think 1970 and it has that nice feel to it in the clothing and look but what starts to interest me most is the postures, expressions and tension between the two girls, one in a revealing bikini (remember this is 70’s Japan) and the other rather more heavily clothed and covered. This more demure looking girl also has a somewhat more uncomfortable looking posture and you can’t help but be struck by the shape of the right hand and the meaning of that gesture. The girl on the left looks more liberated (remember this is 70’s Japan) but at the same time a little conscious of the risks that might come with that. I really love the hair and the fact that the eyes are in shadow it all adds to the mysteriousness. Even the little face on the towel looks a little unsure of himself and seems to have self doubts about his radiance and that is the overall feeling I get from the photo, no one is entirely confident with whats going on here and there seems to be a metaphor of 70’s Japan at play here in the struggle between more conservative values, modernisation and liberalisation and the search for identity. Its this final point that really allows me to use my imagination, I am never sure if the girls have been arguing, if the girl on the right is trying to reason and reconcile with the other girl or if they are at odds with each other and the overriding sexual tension is never far away.

If I was to pick a photo-book that defines Japan in the 70’s For a Language to Come would be it and if I was asked to chose a single image representation of that time then I would probably go for this one with its seductive ability to create imaginative possibilities. I don’t want to lock the photo into the 70’s though as many of its themes of age, liberalisation, relationship and sexuality are timeless and I think that is one reason that it still appears to me as contemporary now as it was when Nakahira pressed the shutter on it in 1970.

Colin Steel, Sunday 7th September 2014, Singapore.