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.....How
do you organise a book of photos? You study the images, you put them in
order, you construct a relationship between them and try to give them
a certain visual rhythm. In other words, you adopt the methods of a film
editor; you become the director who takes his/her original clips, then
cuts and splices them until the definitive film has been created.
.....When
I look at the images that make up this volume, I cannot help but wonder
what it was that made Manchevski abandon, even if temporarily, his work
as a film director and focus on photography. I cannot help thinking of
the title he has chosen for this book, Street, the theme around which
the images have been "edited;" and then there is what the photographer
indicated when he first showed me his choice of photographs.
.....Manchevski
has no doubts about the differences between a film director and a photographer:
cinema is a synthesis of artistic disciplines dependent on market forces,
he pointed out, which conditions the creative freedom of the artist much
more than photography. Of course, he is right, it takes a lot of people
to make a film, and a lot of money. Taking a photo, on the other hand,
is instantaneous, all the photographer needs to do is take a good look
at him/herself, a good look at the subject and "click": It is
an independent act that requires no organisation nor production, and from
this point of view, it is not limited in any way.
.....I
thought about this for a long time. This is all very well, but Manchevski
just happens to be the director of that extraordinary film, Before the
Rain. I can still remember exactly how I felt at the end of that film:
it was a mixture of intense joy and bitterness, the thought of what I
have seen pained me, and - yet - at the same time, I was exhilarated by
the way in which the story had been presented. This film was not a simplistic
reproduction of reality, it was much more. It had distilled, interpreted
and given its audience reality in the form of a refined language with
a series of metaphors producing infinite variations of meaning. How can
a director who is so overwhelmingly original be afraid that his work is
limited?
.....Is
this why Manchevski has decided to look for new creative stimuli, or is
it simply that he has decided to explore the brilliant ideas that gave
birth to his first full length film in other forms? Has he decided to
establish a more precise relationship between his work as a director and
his work as a photographer?
.....The
most powerful images in Before the Rain, its most emotional and figuratively
intense moments, all seem to be profoundly bound to the photographs that
make up this volume. Manchevski, the director produces personal images,
marked by precise and powerful artistic individuality and unmistakable
style. Even if he longs to shrug off the chains that cinema imposes on
him and even if he has intensified his artistic exploration, Manchevski,
the photographer has not abandoned the spirit with which he directed his
first film, nor has he left the roots of his own particular brand of poetry.
What he has done is to pick out certain observations from the film and
to weld these into a new structure, a further reflection on the reality
of the world in which we live.
.....Street.
The title of this photographic journey plunges us immediately into the
depths of social landscape. Traces of humanity captured as if by chance,
in the rhythm of their day-to-day life, routine gestures, figures met
at the moment when pressing a button - who then slip away - visual structures
stolen from environments that shirk every attempt to decode them.
.....Manchevski
seems to shy away from highlighting details, his method does not underline
the particular, indulge in dramatic twists or promote a certain viewpoint
at the expense of another. He flees from any technical or figurative expedient
that may give the photograph an immediate, transparent meaning and cheat
the observer of the pleasure and surprise of ambiguity. This is where
Manchevski's provocative style surfaces, the same character, the same
stare that remains both involved yet distant, immersed yet subtly objective,
the style that I had admired so much in Before the Rain which can now
be found on every page. Here again, his incredible ability to suspend
and at the same time render dynamic the subject of the frame, is apparent.
It may be a single image or a sequence, but what is important is his ability
to confer a polysemous structure on his work that permits the discovery
of a multitude of interest points that give depth to his communicative
power and are never exhausted at the first viewing.
.....Manchevski's
photographs are is simple, direct and extremely agile; he never displays
what the observer desires or expects. There is nothing brutal in these
photographs, nothing narcissistic and in this respect his work is a significant
move away from the pseudo-realism of many other contemporary photo reporters
and from the abstraction of those who render reality as a type of game.
Manchevski does not judge or scream, nor does he select his subjects on
the basis of predefined calculations. On the contrary: he seems to neglect
the most important details rather than push them into the centre of his
shots. This way the images give a real sensation of the street, a flow
of events that proceed simultaneously in all directions, spotted almost
out of the corner of the eye. The curious desire to individualise something
is ever present, further ahead, further behind, to the side, behind a
half-closed window, in a garden, in the shade or in a local shop, anything
that reveals a vital flow, a trace of humanity.
.....There
is no point in expecting for these photos to give us a history lesson,
to scream in pain or to flare up in anger or revolt. We cannot expect
to find any consolation in these images. These places, these faces even
if they seem familiar, remain forever shrouded in mystery, they slip into
their own world that neither the viewer, nor the photographer, will ever
be fully able to grasp. This is what struck me most about these photographs.
In this era of global information, which penetrates all things and which
levels every difference, which has an explanation for every phenomenon,
and never stops to look below the surface, it comes as a relief to drown
our certainties in the steamy, enigmatic, indistinct flood of the street.
Andrea
Morini
Bologna, May 4, 1999
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