Into the Woods: Trees in Photography at the V&A, recommended.

In this free exhibition at the V&A, trees are being presented by different photographers from different periods. The pictures are mostly black and white photographs, but there are also some colour photographs by other well known photographers. In the older photographs the trees are pictured for their botanical interest; in the more recent ones it is their poetic symbolism that catches the eye & the mind.

Photo by Ansel Adams courtesy of Pinterest

In this blog I am not able to write about each individual photographer due to the wide variety of work on display. I will be highlighting some works only. The exhibition features both classic and contemporary images and depicts our relationship with trees over the years; it also highlights the development of photography during this time. Trees are shown as symbolic, as abstract, destined for destruction, for poetry; each photograph is individual, has an individual narrative. It also makes us think about the roles that trees play for us, for example absorbing pollution and cleansing our air, contributing to our  wellbeing.  We should not take them for granted. In the exhibition there are famous photographers such as Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Agnes Warburg. There are also examples of manipulated photographs for example the 1839 photograph  by Johann Carl Enslen and recent works by Tokihiro Sato, titled ‘In the Forests of the Hakkoda Mountains’ see pic below. Trees offer an abundance of possibilities, their cycles changing with the seasons,  some wild, some cultivated. The pictures are often lyrical.

Photo by Tokihiro Sato courtesy of Pinterest

One work that stood out for me was the photograph by Tal Shoshat called ‘Rimon (pomegranate) Afarsimon 2011’ see pic. below, a tree ripe with fruits standing in front of a black background lit artificially. It isolates the tree from the landscape and presents it as a monument. It is a symbol of fertility and of endurance. The fruits are pomegranates, at their peak of their growing cycle. This made me think of an artificial garden of Eden, natural and fabricated at the same time,
not to be encountered in real life.

Photo by Tal Shoshat, courtesy of Pinterest

Tal Shoshat cleans the branches and leaves before shooting the photos and takes photographs of trees that grow in Israel. I found the work theatrical, different from all the other photos in the exhibition. It is one of the few colour photographs in the exhibition. Instead of taking a portrait of a person Shoshat takes one of a tree. I found it interesting that Tal Shoshat titled it Afarsimon

which in the Talmud & Midrash means balsam. The ancient Jewish community of Ein Gedi was cultivating it. It was considered to be very precious and used as an oil, the oil of persimmon. Persimmons are very rich  fruits cultivated in large numbers in Israel, the fruit is seen as a  symbol of fertility in many cultures.
Tal Shoshat’s photographs are about the contrast between reality and artifice, they question the honesty of photography as a documentary medium.

Photo by Robert Adams, courtesy of Pinterest

Another photograph I focused on was one completely different in meaning and in nature. This was by Robert Adams, titled ‘On Signal Hill Overlooking Long Beach California 1983’. This is in gelatin silver print on paper. Robert Adams photographic interest is in the connection between landscape & humans, and the impact that humans have had on the American landscape. The photograph in question is black and white. The trees are an image of nature as a whole. Taken on the outskirts of suburbia, they feel lost, fragile, thin, battered, and a reminder of what’s left of nature. The cityscape is suffocated by smog. It’s a powerful photograph showing the results of human activity on the environment. This is in contrast to the 19th century photographs of the American West,  for example by Timothy O’ Sullivan, which showed the American landscape as huge untouched spaces and still wild see pic below. 

Photo by Timothy O'Sullivan courtesy of Pinterest

Robert Adams instead is concerned with the destruction of nature. He transforms the pictures of the trees into a dying presence and rejects the conventions of beauty of the landscape of the 19th century photographers. The trees shown here appear exhausted by the interference of humans and their constant meddling with nature. His photographs are a living document of what is left of the natural world. It is an understated, alluding photograph that opens up a bigger narrative. He is a keen walker, like I am. Some of his greatest photographs have come out of his walking expeditions. Through his photography he depicts the everyday in life and the changes that nature is going through. In his series ‘Turning Back 1990-2003’see pic below, he was focusing on the destruction of the tall trees of the American North West where they used clearcutting despite opposition, and have substantially reduced the original forest. His work records the changes by man on the landscape and I think he grieves about the losses of trees.

Photo by Robert Adams courtesy of Pinterest

I also enjoyed seeing the photograph by Joseph Sudek titled ‘The Window of My Studio 1944-1954’ see pics below; he was also called the Poet of Prague. His photographs are evocative and poetic, and he took many shots from his studio. In this specific photograph he points at the communion between outside and inside, it’s a reflection on the two coming together, the exterior world and the interior world, the relationship between the real world and the mysterious.

Photo by Joseph Sudek courtesy of Pinterest

They are intimate photographs taken in his studio. He was fascinated with light and was a master at pigment printing and thus was able to create very atmospheric photographs, which make the viewer reflect. They are gentle. Few people appear in his pictures; he was considered to be shy and he only had one arm. Despite this he carried his own cameras and was a resilient character. He also took photographs of the wooden landscape in Bohemia. They remind me of romanticism, a period I have been looking to with my own work. He used the camera to explore Prague, and the world around him. Even when the city was ravaged by war he kept focusing on the everyday beauty of life. He used to take walks circling around the town. The resulting photographs came under the series titled ‘Prague Panoramic’ see pic. below.

Photo by Joseph Sudek courtesy of Pinterest

His photographs are intimate and haunting. He was badly injured during World War I.  I always admired his resilience and the way he pushed forward with photography in challenging times.  Sometimes he adjusted the camera using his teeth. I think he created his own style of romanticism. He creates a specific atmosphere in his photographs of his garden and his trees.  He kept taking pictures even when the Nazis were taking over Czechoslovakia, showing sad, melancholic photos of the city under occupation. His studio turned into a hub for other artists. He made use of a view camera which resulted in slow photography,  waiting for a long time before taking the image.

Photo by Jerry Uelsmann courtesy of Pinterest

Finally I liked the image by Jerry Uelsmann called ‘Untitled 1969’ see pic above.

He is interested in the surreal in photography, he creates fantasy scenes incorporating trees. He created this amazing photograph before the use of digital technology by using multiple negatives. We see a tree floating in air above the ground over a lake. It speaks to the viewer’s imagination calling him/her to complete the image. There is no one way of reading it. It takes a lot of skill & hard work to produce his photographs. He loves working in the darkroom. He is not restricted to one single negative.  His work requires skilled assemblage. The image is black and white, it’s a dreamscape with an open psychological meaning; he creates an alternate reality. His picture goes beyond actual landscape, it’s more a work of imagination and prompts the viewer to tap into the unconscious see pics below, it’s an emotional work away from the conceptual.

Photos by Jerry Uelsmann courtesy of Pinterest

Exhibition of Mark Ruwedel's photos at Tate Modern, Boiler House level 2 West.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori of Mark Ruwedel's work.

Late on Friday I decided to wander around Tate Modern to view the exhibition by Mark Ruwedel see pic. above; it was late so there was hardly anybody around which was great. I was able to spend more time focusing on the work without getting disturbed. Mark Ruwedel takes photographs of the North American landscape, presenting the human interaction with the landscape and what is left behind by human activity. The photographs are shown in sequence, they are small and are surrounded by a white frame. They force you to look in and slow down. I didn't feel the lighting in the room was correct; if you didn't pay attention, then at a distance the pictures tend to blend into themselves, with the detail getting lost see pic below.

Photo by Mirta Imperatori of Mark Ruwedel's work

I would have liked to see a different type of lighting, showing more detail of the photographs.

The photographs are ghostly views of flatlands, lines of tracks barely visible stretching into the distance, cutting through rocks. They are beautiful photographs taken with care, mid frontal shots, classical in terms of proportions and presented in an ordered way. They reminded me of Robert Adams.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

I particularly liked the selection of empty houses left abandoned in the desert see pic above; they look like they are in the middle of nowhere but they are actually not far from LA. He is interested in the human trace, what is left behind after human activity  and the way the space has been used. He is questioning the notion of  'pure nature' showing that it's been degraded by human activity to the point where original nature no longer exists and the landscape has become an historical archive of human activity. He takes photos over and over again of the same subject using old fashioned methods: an analogue camera, old fashioned paper and traditional darkrooms methods.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

He is attracted to neglected spaces. The houses in his photos are abandoned homes see pic. above, showing the residual traces of the human presence,  some of the houses have been so neglected that they are just disappearing back into the desert landscape. This prompts thoughts of transitoriness of human life with migration from one place to another. So a house that used to be someone's cherished home is no longer inhabited and degrades into nothing, it gives out a feeling of emptiness. The photographs share a sense of vulnerability and precariousness; according to Ruwedel they are tragic as they allude to a harsh environment.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest

Next to the above pictures there is also a series of photographs documenting areas in the Western United States, again photos of the desolate vast landscapes, named after hell or the devil by explorers and settlers, evoking the harsh environment, then unpopulated, now an historical archive of human presence see pic. above.

I was particularly interested also in his project called 'Following Nigel' where he literally followed long distance hiker Nigel Naab walking across Los Angeles.  He was following his own route across as many neighbourhoods as possible, both actual districts but also economic, social divides. Mark Ruwedel photographed what he found interesting along the way; he explored the different areas from the point of view of someone on foot, focusing on the signs of human movement. This particular work made me think of Vito Acconci & his work: 'Following Piece (October 3-25 1969)' where he picked a person at random & follow them until they entered a car, a building or a cinema.

Photo by Mark Ruwedel courtesy of Pinterest 

Most of the photographs in the exhibition are gelatin silver prints on paper, they are quite faint, giving a ghostly pallor.  There is also a series of photos of the edges of dried up lakes in the Californian desert, lakes formed thousands of years ago by melting glaciers see pic. above.
This is very topical because the disappearance of the lakes coincided with the arrival of humans. The photos invite us to think about the relationship between humans and landscape and the degradation that often follows human arrival. There is a further series of photos he took at the Wendover Air Force Base in Utah; this is where the pilots of the Enola Gay trained for the bombing of Hiroshima. The crafters shown in the photos are more recent.

I noticed towards the end of the exhibition a series of photos in homage to pop artist Ed Ruscha. Ruwedel took photos of fifteen apartments shown in Ruscha's series; they present a study on the changes of the urban landscape of Los Angeles.

Social Media.

The shooting at YouTube was really shocking. It was reported in the news that the shooter spent her whole time online, it sounds like her whole identity was based on her online activity and when  YouTube pulled the plug by filtering her content her identity collapsed, imploded. She was fixated by projecting her persona through YouTube and felt a sense of grievance which could have also occurred through non digital interactions.

Social media can be very addictive; basically they try to keep you on their sites as long as possible to make money. We are constantly checking for updates, interrupting the regular flow of things in the real world; it is the same with videos, you have to constantly upload videos to remain relevant. Nowadays in London you see a lot of people staring at their smart phones while walking, on transport, inside cafes, people are no longer talking or looking at each other, they have their noses peeled onto their screen, oblivious to the surrounding world; the real world is just another interruption from ones checking ones own screen. The irony is the more we seek to connect to others in the virtual world through social media the more we become disconnected from the real world. Isn't social media more ephemeral than real friends in the real world? There have been several studies done on this, where participants were found to feel more isolated after spending more than two hours on social media. Also more importantly people that spend longer times online were found to be less tolerant, less accepting of other people in the real world.

The fact is that interactions online can be of the same nature over and over again and you can ensure that your conversations are brief, but when you go back in the real world interactions may not be quite so easily managed. So being online for very long periods of time might leave you ill equipped to deal with problems in the real world. On the other hand, for some people who are house-bound social media can be an important life line where they can meet new people. 

Also the wanting to be constantly connected, worrying that you might not be answering messages, makes people anxious and leaves them unable to spend quiet time with themselves without feeling guilty or uncomfortable, with their minds somewhere else. We can show to the world a better side of ourselves online, for example with a wide ranging selection of filters on Instagram. Then there is the aspect of monetization; some people spend a lot of time online selling stuff on ebay, uploading videos to YouTube, Twitter or Instagram but how much money are users of these sites making? Some are doing very well but others are not, and they are just wasting time a bit like TV binging. The social media companies are making money with advertisements and people's data. Some people have a lot of followers and make an income but others don't make money at all. If one for example spends three hours each day on social media but one doesn't  make any money wouldn't they be better off just having a minimum wage normal job?

Losing followers and money can produce a negative psychological effect, especially to someone with a fragile identity with no real job who spends most of their time online on their own and whose identity revolves around this activity. This can never be an excuse for going around shooting people. I felt terrible for the poor people at YouTube, what a terrifying experience! And then there is the issue of censorship and where it crosses the line from social interest to social control. 

Social media can also be positive, helping people for example to get connected in a positive way. In one particular case a man from Yemen was able to escape war and death thanks to social media.

On the other hand some people, when their ratings go down do dangerous things, for example posting crazy things online to send their ratings back up again. If someone shutdown social media all of a sudden for whatever reason would people have a nervous breakdown or get their lives back? Some people find Facebook really useful in terms of getting info on events that are happening but are worried about the data breach. I do enjoy using YouTube and I have never had any problems with it. 

Also with other social media sites, you can get to meet people you wouldn't normally meet but it's not good to spend excessive amounts of time on it. But we go back to the addiction element of them; whilst you might enjoy interacting with others online, being connected, or having the impression of being connected, the lack of real friendships can bring problems in the real world. Are we really able to switch ourselves off from them? Also there may be a shortage of well paid, real jobs in the world and that's why a lot of people go online in the hope of promoting themselves, to make money. Some people have the false illusion that online you can become a star, they dream of becoming famous like on the TV show Britain's Got Talent. I mean some vloggers on YouTube do very well, but it is a highly competitive global environment, the bottom line is social media sites are a business with a global reach and when they expand too much they still have to deal with growth problems and other issues like any other business.

Some of this is what I have been addressing in my current work which is about isolation and anomie, a sense of disassociation from society. In an age where people are pushed to be constantly connected through digital media where is this leading us? If on one level we are using social media as a distraction from the things that give our life real meaning on another level social media is changing how we relate to each other. My work aims to highlight this dichotomy.

Text & images come under copyright  © 2018 Mirta Imperatori

Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian Gallery. Recommended.

How to sum up this winter? We had one of the darkest winters in years, snow in February and now snow again in the middle of March. I am happy though that the days are longer, it makes such a difference. I can't remember a year when it snowed this late, anyhow it looks beautiful, I love it! 

In the news also is the attempted assassination of Russians on British soil and the use of a chemical agent for the first time since WWII in Europe, and the fact that whoever used the chemical agent is most worryingly still out there.. Also I found the lack of information from the Government surprising, what to do if you come into contact with a nerve agent or other chemical, I mean like any other mere mortal I just googled it up on what to do in case it happens. With all of this happening & lack of sleep I was still able to meet my deadlines, with great results. I decided to take an afternoon off and go to the Gogasian Gallery near King's Cross station to view the works by Vera Lutter & Nancy Rubins. It was an oasis of peace in there.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery.

The exhibition by Vera Lutter is titled Turning Time; she uses a large pinhole camera, she revived the camera obscura (light enters into a dark camera space thorough the pinhole and it projects an image inside the box onto the photgraphic paper) by using a large shipping container instead of using a small box. She then left the exposure for several hours, even days and months which then gave the work a ghostly appearance. All the photographs are large and are positioned in one room on the walls; some are put together as they are so large and you have to get close to notice this. She took photographs of ancient temples in Paestum, Italy, positioning the container at different angles, so has sometimes to get close ups of the subject or sometimes to get distant images. This ancient site includes three temples built around 550BCE, for the gods Neptune and Athena. Basically she turns a shipping container into a large camera obscura see pics above and below.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Next to the above pictures are photographs of the Effelsberg Radio telescope at the Max Planck Insitut fur Radioastronomiey in Germany, where she went in 2013, that records cosmic acitvity in space see pic. below. They are all inverted black and white images, each image is unique, it is a slow process where she observes the changes that happened outside of the pinhole, like catching shadows; the long exposure gives a sense of emptiness, of the blackness of the photos observing the mystery of darkness, of time passing.  It actually reminded me of Andy Warhol's film Empire with the long observation of an object, registering the changes see link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMCeDBn1Zu0.
The pinhole camera is not well suited to capture fast movements such as cars, they would look like fragments, and it is an imaginative use of the camera obscura which was big in Victorian times. There are no people in the photographs; she would have spent a long time observing, recording the changes of the building over time.

Photo by Vera Lutter courtesy of Pinterest.

Her work is very different in nature from that of Nancy Rubins as evidenced in her exhibition titled Diversifolia which dominates the main room in a playful way. You can't really avoid it, not that you would want to as it is fun see pic below.

Nancy Rubin's sculptures photo courtesy of the Guardian.

It included found over-the-top garden ornamental objects/animals which are turned upside down, connected together through wires, going in different directions. She uses a structural property in her work called 'tensegrity': here the individual animals/objects are secured with tensile wires in a compact way. They made me think of bouquets of flowers scattered in all directions, that give you the illusion of floating in the air. They are monochrome, cast in iron, bronze, brass, aluminium, I went close up to them and I saw an upside down turtle at the bottom, a duck, a zebra, a crocodile tail, there is a lot to look at in the sculptures! While the wires zig zag through them, the sculptures invite you to walk around them to discover them as a whole. They have an organic feel to them, despite their being made of metal, as though they have grown rather then being designed, and they still retain a feeling of randomness & untidiness see pic below.

Photo courtesy of the Londonist.com.

In the exhibition room there are also two large drawings see pic below. At first I thought it was a wavy sculpture made out of aluminium (this is how good it is) fluidly moving across the wall, again in an organic way  and then when I went close up to it I realised it was made out of paper covered in graphite. It made me think of the heavy dense drawings by Richard Serra.

Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

It went really well with the other sculptures in the room, the balance between an organic fluid piece and the tension and the controlled caos and absurdity of the other works. I thought it was funny, the fact that she is recycling expensive garden ornaments that you would find in wealthy houses in California where she is based and she turns them into sculptures/installations which are surreal and which defy gravity. Brilliant exhibition.

My latest exhibitions.

Below is a selection of my photographs from my latest exhibitions in 2018 & 2017, which were successful and well attended.

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Lewisham Arthouse 2018

Summer Exhibition 2017

Summer Exhibition 2017

Winter Exhibition 2017

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. Recommended.

I like going to the movies at odd hours when there is hardly anybody inside the cinema and I can fully focus on the movie without having to worry about people using their mobile phones or chatting, without getting some tall person sitting in front of me blocking the view. It's quite funny because I am not the only one doing this. Sometimes when I went to the movies I noticed a Chinese student doing exactly the same thing as I was doing, so we generally find each other at the same movie. Again this time I bought my ticket at the desk, not from a machine. I am not keen on machines that have replaced people, inside supermarkets and in other outlets, I just generally avoid them; companies should employ more people not soulless machines, machines take jobs from humans. It's amusing to see how England is adopting the worst from the USA and has become so Americanised; you know the long hours at work in the office, machines instead of people, poor quality coffee chains where the coffee costs double that in Europe and still doesn't taste of coffee.

Courtesy of Pinterest.

When I bought my ticket I said: Can I have one ticket for the Shape of Water? The guy behind the desk answered, sure, is this just for yourself? And I am like: as opposed to what? A dozen perhaps?.. Anyway I went inside the cinema, the Chinese student was already positioned in his favourite seat. I noticed that we were the only two single people in the whole cinema. We were surrounded by couples, it was more busy than usual...

Eliza & the amphibian fish, courtesy of Pinterest. 

The movie The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro is up for 13 nominations at the Oscars.

It's a fantasy, drama, romance, starring Sally Hawkings as Eliza Esposito, the mute cleaner  who works in a top secret military facility/lab in the Baltimore area. Doug Jones is the amphibian fish alien creature captured by the American Military in South America. They fall in love; he will break her monotony of daily egg eating and cleaning at the facility, he will learn her language and how to be emotionally intelligent. Eliza Esposito has two friends, one is the gay older illustrator called Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, with whom she lives in the same building above a cinema. They are both single and sexually frustrated and they keep each other company by watching old films on TV, usually musicals.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Giles likes a young man that works in a restaurant where they make pies. Giles goes there regularly with Eliza to buy pies they don't like as an excuse to chat to the man behind the counter. But it's the early 1960's and things are not smooth if you are gay and when he makes a pass at the counter guy, he is told to leave and not come back. This is another dig from the director at the wholesome image of America; in fact the guy behind the counter hates gays and is a racist, he is not as nice as he appears.

Giles was  forced to leave his job and spends most of the time in his studio at home with his cats creating the perfect illustration that might get him his job back. The funny bits of the movie are left to Eliza's other friend Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, another cleaner at the military lab.

Dr Hoffstetler with Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

I found the character of Dr Hoffstetler, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, the scientitist in the lab who is studying the creature, had depth because he is not just a scientist but also a Russian spy. He  is not close to the creature, unlike Eliza, but can see the creature responding emotionally. Dr Hoffstetler responds emotionally too, putting himself at risk when helping Eliza, which is not generally what scientists in movies do but he still does it from a scientific point of view. He will help Eliza, Giles and Zelda to save the creature from a violent fate at the hand of the guard Strikland, played by Michael Shannon. While Eliza is gentle to the creature and he responds to her in a gentle way, Strickland is a sadist government guard who enjoys causing pain to the creature. He hates its freakishness and smell. He loves power, he abuses power, so we see him in his work environment dominating others through fear. The meaning of this is violence brings more violence and that people in authority can abuse power if not kept in check.

Guard Strickland, Eliza & Zelda courtesy of Pinterest.

Then we see him in his home environment. Perfect on the outside, with the 1950's ever so pleasing wife, who cooks and cleans. It's the ideal of suburbia, the American dream, but it is all rotten. Everything looks perfect and beautiful on the outside but it is not so on the inside. Strickland is a troubled dark character. He enjoys inflicting violence on the creature, seeking to be in control. I don't like violence in movies, I generally find it hard to watch or hear about violence inflicted on others so I was sliding down inside my chair hiding behind my popcorn at violence scenes.

Strickland's family is a dysfunctional family where the wife is there to please her husband and his sexual desires while not truly expressing herself, she is a robot, a non entity. Strickland has little emotional connection with her and the kids, he wants her not to talk when they have sex, he doesn't care about her as long as his sexual needs are met. Strickland wants a better car, he will buy a flashy expensive car beyond his salary and to afford it he is willing to kill the creature, so he puts his wants and desires before anybody else's, he is a selfish man, he represents selfish capitalism but after buying the expensive car he is still not happy. The parable of this is that consumerism doesn't make you happy for long. Eliza, Giles, Zelda and Hoffstetler are the heart and the true heroes of the story, they are the outsiders, the misfits. Happiness has got nothing to do with how much money you have or what you own.

Giles & Eliza, courtesy of Pinterest.

Guillermo del Toro uses a specific colour palette throughout the movie, such as blue/greens/teal more inside the lab and grey representing metal and cold, while inside Eliza's and Giles's flats there are more earthy colours with hints of red here and there that add warmth. There is the green lime pie, or the green soap dispenser inside the lab. The candy that Stirckland eats is green, his car is teal, candy holds no nutritional value, it's just sugar. Eliza's shoes at one point are red, her coat is red too, red which symbolises love, passion and love for the cinema. Blue, green for water but also for the future. Giles's & Eliza's flats are old, they remind you of old Europe, post war Europe, it is nostalgic. The colour scheme creates a dreamy tone and an alternate atmosphere. The colours help the development of the story. It is a beautiful, moving, well thought out movie.

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.