ANDREI TARKOVSKI - INSTANT LIGHT - TARKOVSKY POLAROIDS

Few types of photographs evoke the flood of feelings and associations like a Polaroid. The familiar whirr and click of the picture being pushed out of the camera and into one’s hands, the milky white that soon turns to a uniquely muted color palette, the iconic bottom-weighted border–these are the shared experiences of the Polaroid. The real intimacy of these small treasures, however, takes place between the photographer, the scene, and the instant print. The sense of literal presence–of “being there”–that a Polaroid gives is unparalleled, for you are with the scene and the image at once. With the Polaroid, presence and essence are one.

Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky, who passed away in 1986, undoubtedly felt a connection with the Polaroid. This small, elegant volume presents sixty of his instant prints made between 1979 and 1984. Through his eyes we see life–landscapes, living spaces, people–but also light. Tarkovsky’s awareness of light as mood is evident in his still images just as much as in his films. The Polaroids show graceful beams of sunlight flowing through windows and across subjects to create deep shadows, delicate highlights, and a mood that speaks to the melancholy beauty of the everyday.

Interspersed with the richly reprinted Polaroids are quotes from various interviews with Tarkovsky in which he elaborates on happiness and his loves, but also loneliness and the existential challenges of being in the world. There is a sadness to his ruminations, but also an acceptance of true joy being not the emotion itself but man’s quest toward it. Tarkovsky’s Polaroids show us those moments in which this realization is complete by presenting the fleeting visual instants capable of making one’s spirit feel simultaneously full and empty.

This review originally appeared in Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Issue 34.6 (May/June 2006)