The movie: Ida.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

A friend suggested seeing the movie Ida. It is a beautifully shot black and white movie that reminds you of Vermeer paintings. It came out a while back and I missed it at the cinema at the time. At the beginning of the movie, I thought how beautiful it was, but as the movie goes along, the grey  landscape and the minimal way it is shot feels oppressive; however, it is oppressive and beautiful at the same time. This is the story of Anna, a novice catholic nun, 17 years old, who has lived all her life inside a convent, and has not experienced life in the world outside.  She is about to take her final vows in the convent where she was abandoned as an orphan baby. But she has one surviving relative, her aunt. The Mother Superior insists she contacts her aunt before Anna, later known as Ida, takes her final vows.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Her aunt, Wanda Gruz, played by Agata Kulesza, is a completely opposite character to Ida.  She is a combative, hard-drinking woman who lives on her own and is a far more interesting character than Ida. When Ida goes to meet her aunt for the first time, Wanda is standing near the window in the kitchen, chain smoking, in her dressing gown, a man is lying in bed next door. One makes some immediate assumptions about Wanda. Pawlikowski the director encourages this by taking a direct camera shot at the man in bed. The whole setting of the scene leads you  to understand that Wanda is not married, and the situation is that Ida is meeting her aunt just after she has been having sex. But Wanda is not what you might think, she is actually a magistrate.

Ida - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda brutally tells her niece who she, Anna, really is. Anna's original name is Ida Lebestein, and she is Jewish. So she says to her niece, sarcastically; you know you are a Jewish nun! There is shock in Ida's face, it is all understated acting. This piece of information changes everything. It will make her question her faith and who she is in the world. Ida says to Wanda that she wants to know what happened to her parents during the war. Wanda and you yourself the viewer are dreading this as you know very well what happened to Jewish people during World War II in Poland, the Holocaust. As the viewer you know that this is going to be a difficult, emotional journey. But Wanda takes charge and they set off on a road trip.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

This is a dark journey, one that questions the silence of the Catholic Church, depicts anti-semitism, the awful things people do to survive, and how do they live or not with their decisions afterwards.  This is in stark contrast with Ida the nun, her innocence, her naivety, her habits which have all been established by a pre-ordered system, her going to bed at the same time, saying prayers at the same time. Her status as a nun gives her the respect of the local people in Catholic Poland which is almost comical, as you now know she was born Jewish.

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Wanda opens up and pushes the local people in the village with force and coercion to tell her the truth about what happened to Ida's parents and at this stage you realise it is not Ida who is most affected by this but it is actually Wanda. Her sister was murdered in a forest. In one particular scene you can hear the sound of the wind and the rattling of Ida's parents' bones which they take to bury properly, and you realise why she is the way she is: the heavy drinking, constantly sleeping with men, not able to be close to anybody. All this makes you realise that she is the one who survived, she carries the weight of these wartime experiences.... does she now suffer from survival guilt?

Ida - Photos courtesy of Pinterest

Ida realises as well that Wanda, the only surviving relative of her family, is lost and depressed; there are two sides to her, one that is pro-active and fighting to move forward and the other which is self destructive, and you don't know which side will prevail. Ida's moral innocence is counterbalanced by the weight of her aunt's history and life, you are very much aware she had to carry it all by herself and that has made her feel separated from others, unable to truly share who she really is. The person with whom she shared everything, her beloved sister, was brutally murdered. All of this is handled by the director with minimal shooting, that makes you think of the French director Truffaut and Bergman. There is no direct violence, but the sense of war is  strongly felt throughout the movie.The lengthy camera shots, the closeups of the forest, the vast landscape covered in snow, the rattling bones; all is done by association. It is a lyric movie that opens a lot of questions on the history of Poland during the war and about collaboration and antisemitism and it raises questions about faith and living in the material world.

Primo Levi - Photo courtesy of Pinterest

At a certain point the movie made me think of Primo Levi, whose death always troubled me. How can someone of his rigour and discipline, who survived Auschwitz, then die years later at his own hand. 

I always preferred to believe Rita Levi Montalcini's version of events saying he could have just fallen down the staircase of his appartment block in Turin; yes he was on antidepressants, but some people have side effects from them, making them unsteady, dizzy, lowering blood pressure. He could have just simply slipped off by mistake since he had just had surgery and the staircase was rather tight. Anyway, his writing legacy lives on with the masterpiece on Auschwitz 'If This is a Man'.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest

Going back to Ida, it is a powerful, beautiful, minimalist movie that opens up a lot of questions, but I felt that neither woman, Wanda or Ida, was able to overcome their history; they are bound up in it.

From the point of view of an artist, I think I was observing how the film was shot, the shots on the landscape that create a mood, and the beautiful black and white monochrome which I have been using myself lately in my photographs. I have a keen interest in analogue photography, the difference sense of time one gets from using analogue instead of digital, by working in a dark room instead of a computer.

Tate Modern level 4: Daido Moriyama's photographs.

With my friends we run a music club once a week where we meet and listen to music, each of us can choose a piece and sometimes describe it, if the others don't know it. The last time I went to my friends' house, which I love doing because it's like going back to England in the 1950's, you step inside and it's a time warp, everything literally is from the 1950's, and we spend time listening to wonderful music.
I look at their couch in wonder, I can't believe this 1950's style type of couch still exists, it is so comfortable, just perfect for listening to music.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Anyway after I viewed the installation of photographs by Carrie Mae Weems at Tate Modern, I decided to go up to level 4 and look at Daido Moriyama's photographs. I was curious about his work, his obsessiveness in taking photographs and leaving them undeveloped for 30 years.

Moriyama (born in 1938), the master of street photography, worked for the photographic journal Provoke by invitation of Takuma Nakahiri, who in 1968 asked him to join in the second issue see pic below.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama took photographs of a couple having sex in a hotel. This was in contravention of traditional Japanese culture. He loved photographing his area in Tokyo called: Shinjyuku. He has always been a voyeuristic street photographer, wandering around, pointing and shooting with his camera. His style called: Bure(=Shake) and Boke(=No focus). He made the images blurry, unfocused, grainy, shot in rapid succession, then seeing how they developed in the darkroom.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

He was inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the fact that he wrote on a continuous roll of paper, no interruptions. In Moriyama's case continuously taking photographs of the ordinary, taking in the city landscape, his impressions of the city, chance encounters, moods but also the grittiness of the ordinary, without trying to prettify them. With this approach he still produced striking images. His close ups make you slow down as a viewer, they force you to look in at the everyday that could be your everyday, he shows imperfect human beings up close: a woman opening her eye wide see pic below, a boy's shaved head; they could all be you the viewer, you tend to identify with them as they are depicted in a natural, ordinary way. He also takes photos of discarded, ugly objects, that you might not have noticed. The photographs are all in sequence, closely put together like a menu of images that create a view of a city they are melancholic images of the ordinary.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

It should be understood that this technique of documentating the everyday life in an urban environment, for example showing a photo of a urinal covered in tape, was a departure from the norms in Japan. It can be linked to the mass observation movement originating in the UK in 1937. Mass observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain, using large numbers of untrained volunteer observers. The photos in the exhibition are monochrome; by using black and white instead of colour he avoids distractions and he is able to focus for example more on detail close ups such as facial expressions.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama published the book Farewell Photography, orginally titled Bye Bye Photography Dear, in 1972. He was deconstructing photography, a process which he started with the photobook Hunter published in the same year.  The entire collection of images was exhibited for the first time at the Paris Photo 2015. The images were out of focus, randomly challenging Western precise photography at the time. Moriyama describes it with these words: 'The authority of the failed negative, with its inherent possibility, could be restored. I imagined I could construct a book - a book of pure sensations without meaning, by shuffling into a harmonious whole, a series of childish images'. Basically he is saying that all photographs are equally valid.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

The book had a punk quality about it, distinguishing it from the photographic medium of its time. It was a forerunner of images that would be used in the 1980's & 1990's, for example by Ray Gun Magazine, an American alternative rock and roll magazine founded by art director David Carson which used an experimental typography and abstract chaotic design. The first issue in November 1992 had on its cover Henry Rollins.

Photo of Ray Gun Magazine courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama also published Memories of a Dog, which was part of Asahi Camera, in 1983. This contains a famous photograph, a close up of a stray dog looking at the camera photographed in Misawa City in 1971. The way the dog is turned towards tha camera with his shoulders down, with a tired, beaten, almost human expression, provides an image that is at once beautiful and wretched, see pic below. The grainy monochromatic quality of the photograph produces poetry.

Photo by Daido Moriyama courtesy of Pinterest

Moriyama said 'some days our howl is that life is wretched, some days life is wonderful'. It was a chance encounter he saw the dog as soon as he stepped out of the hotel where he was staying. You become completely absorbed by his photographs. The book is brilliant, showcasing his travels, it's an autobiographical account, the bars, the coffee shops he has visited, his school, it's about memory, it's nostalgic. He juxtaposes different images together. It was interesting to see ordinary life in Tokyo by a Master, I love his monochromatic photographs.