ITINERARIES By Evgen Bavcar
I was only seven years old when my father died. The most vivid memory I have of him is of a toy gun he made for me, as if to say to me: never stop fighting destiny. I was still unaware that I belonged to a small nation threatened by others. How could I have realized then that it would be the same for me and that I would need so much energy to defend my own identity?
I was a terrible child, who the teachers could hardly teach. I especially liked technology and reading. One day a branch damaged my left eye, and I was unable to predict the great calamity which had been forewarned. For months, I observed the world with just one eye, until one day a mine detonator damaged my right eye as well. I didn't become blind immediately but little by little, it went on for months, as if it were a long farewell to light. So all the time I had to quickly capture the most beautiful things, images of books, colors and celestial phenomena, and to take them with me on a voyage of no return.
While I still detected some traces of light and color, I was happy because I could still see. I retain a vivid memory of the moments of my farewell to the visible world. But monochromy invaded my life and I have to strive to retain the palette and its hues. I color the objects and the people that I touch so that the world escapes from monotony and transparency: I know a woman whose voice is so blue that she manages to paint a gray autumnal day blue. I came across a painter who had a dark red voice, and chance willed that he should love this color; that gave me a dark delight.
I sense the sun by its thermal effects, but I can make mistakes. One day something happened at a friend's home, whose apartment I didn't know well; as I know where the window is in advance by the noise in the street, I said: "The sun is strong today!", but I was unaware that it was a radiator that gave us heat. We laughed together. At the beginning of my blindness, when I took it more seriously, I used to wear very dark glasses to exaggerate my condition; nowadays I use clear glasses to look like an intellectual.
In museums or in exhibitions I enjoy the presence of all the silent gazes, the sound of steps that I perceive even when listening to the voice of my guide, who tries to convey his own gaze to me. Sculpture, on the other hand, gives me an immediate aesthetic feeling, insofar as I have been given permission to touch the statues, something that is not very common. To touch them is my own way of penetrating the myth of Eros and Psyche, which in every other way I am outside. The pale reflection of the oil lamp which for me symbolizes the world of appearances has disappeared. The nostalgia for those inaccessible realities and the desire to embark on the road that leads to them remains.
The intellectual nature of my perception urged me to take my first photos one day, but without any artistic pretension. The smooth surface of the images taken by the camera do not look at me, I only have the physical proof of landscapes and people that I have seen or met. That is to say, my gaze exists only through the simulacrum of the photo that has been seen by someone else. That gaze makes me happy and induces the images to come to life inside me.
There is also the mystery of the human gaze that greatly interests me; in my photos, in fact, the people appear very different before the lens and before themselves. They are different when faced with an unknown or infinite darkness. The absence of the photographer's eye is accentuated by the precarious irreversible moment of taking a photo; that photo which by coming from a hidden gaze is transformed into a kind of double death. The people who are photographed cannot see themselves in the usual way: that complicity between the photographer that confirms them in their narcissism is implicitly missing.
So what is a gaze? It is perhaps the sum of all our dreams in which we forget the nightmare, when we can look in a different way. Besides, darkness is no more than an appearance, given that everyone's life, however dark, is also made up of light. And in the same way as the day often breaks with birdsong, I have learnt how to distinguish the voice of the morning from the voice of the night.
Taken from Evgen Bavcar, Le voyeur absolu, Seuil, Paris.
I was only seven years old when my father died. The most vivid memory I have of him is of a toy gun he made for me, as if to say to me: never stop fighting destiny. I was still unaware that I belonged to a small nation threatened by others. How could I have realized then that it would be the same for me and that I would need so much energy to defend my own identity?
I was a terrible child, who the teachers could hardly teach. I especially liked technology and reading. One day a branch damaged my left eye, and I was unable to predict the great calamity which had been forewarned. For months, I observed the world with just one eye, until one day a mine detonator damaged my right eye as well. I didn't become blind immediately but little by little, it went on for months, as if it were a long farewell to light. So all the time I had to quickly capture the most beautiful things, images of books, colors and celestial phenomena, and to take them with me on a voyage of no return.
While I still detected some traces of light and color, I was happy because I could still see. I retain a vivid memory of the moments of my farewell to the visible world. But monochromy invaded my life and I have to strive to retain the palette and its hues. I color the objects and the people that I touch so that the world escapes from monotony and transparency: I know a woman whose voice is so blue that she manages to paint a gray autumnal day blue. I came across a painter who had a dark red voice, and chance willed that he should love this color; that gave me a dark delight.
I sense the sun by its thermal effects, but I can make mistakes. One day something happened at a friend's home, whose apartment I didn't know well; as I know where the window is in advance by the noise in the street, I said: "The sun is strong today!", but I was unaware that it was a radiator that gave us heat. We laughed together. At the beginning of my blindness, when I took it more seriously, I used to wear very dark glasses to exaggerate my condition; nowadays I use clear glasses to look like an intellectual.
In museums or in exhibitions I enjoy the presence of all the silent gazes, the sound of steps that I perceive even when listening to the voice of my guide, who tries to convey his own gaze to me. Sculpture, on the other hand, gives me an immediate aesthetic feeling, insofar as I have been given permission to touch the statues, something that is not very common. To touch them is my own way of penetrating the myth of Eros and Psyche, which in every other way I am outside. The pale reflection of the oil lamp which for me symbolizes the world of appearances has disappeared. The nostalgia for those inaccessible realities and the desire to embark on the road that leads to them remains.
The intellectual nature of my perception urged me to take my first photos one day, but without any artistic pretension. The smooth surface of the images taken by the camera do not look at me, I only have the physical proof of landscapes and people that I have seen or met. That is to say, my gaze exists only through the simulacrum of the photo that has been seen by someone else. That gaze makes me happy and induces the images to come to life inside me.
There is also the mystery of the human gaze that greatly interests me; in my photos, in fact, the people appear very different before the lens and before themselves. They are different when faced with an unknown or infinite darkness. The absence of the photographer's eye is accentuated by the precarious irreversible moment of taking a photo; that photo which by coming from a hidden gaze is transformed into a kind of double death. The people who are photographed cannot see themselves in the usual way: that complicity between the photographer that confirms them in their narcissism is implicitly missing.
So what is a gaze? It is perhaps the sum of all our dreams in which we forget the nightmare, when we can look in a different way. Besides, darkness is no more than an appearance, given that everyone's life, however dark, is also made up of light. And in the same way as the day often breaks with birdsong, I have learnt how to distinguish the voice of the morning from the voice of the night.
Taken from Evgen Bavcar, Le voyeur absolu, Seuil, Paris.
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1 comment:
É, o cara é sensacional. Oferece aos "normais" a chance de compartilhar com ele um mundo muito particular. O seu mundo. Um mundo "às escuras" para aqueles que não se permitem viajar com Evgen.
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