Life is made up of a series of moments, some of which have the power to shake the very foundations of our existence 鈥 reverberations shaping everything that is to come, and the memory of what came before. These defining junctures, splitting time into eras of 鈥渂efore鈥 and 鈥渁fter鈥, are the subject of Slovak photographer ‘s photobook After. This poignant yet surreal elegy to Koll谩r’s late partner, Maria, is published by .
31 August 2019 was the day that everything changed for Koll谩r. When the photographer鈥檚 partner died by suicide, a large collection of images was left behind, many of which were from location-scouting trips in preparation for a film they had planned to make together. It was only some six months later, with the arrival of Covid-19, that Koll谩r began to explore this archive, embarking on what he describes as a 鈥減ainful but obsessive process鈥 of 鈥減laying with images.鈥 He discovered common threads and jarring tensions across the images. Presented in groups of one to four, in seemingly random spatial arrangements, Koll谩r鈥檚 photographs form an abstract mosaic: a hose lies limp on the steps of an empty swimming pool, emitting a feeble stream of murky blue liquid down the pool鈥檚 steps. Flies cluster on the door handle of a dilapidated car. A suit-clad woman faces off with a crow in an empty meeting room.
Koll谩r was inspired and encouraged by the themes of love, loss and suicide explored in Face to Face (2020), the concluding work of Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya . The project鈥檚 first five cycles, published between 1989 and 2010 and centring on images of his late wife Christine G枚ssler, were drawn from Furuya鈥檚 archive after G枚ssler鈥檚 death by suicide in 1985. In contrast to Koll谩r鈥檚 often abstract images, Face to Face centres on straight portraiture, comprising 150 photographs the couple had taken of each other, presented as pairs and forming a kind of posthumous collaboration between the couple. Koll谩r, on the other hand, includes a single photo of Maria. She lies across the backseat of a car, holding a candle to her ear; an intimate image in sharp contrast with a car that鈥檚 up in flames.
Koll谩r acknowledges the simultaneous universality and deeply personal nature of such cataclysmic life events 鈥 in what he describes as his limited 鈥渘arration鈥 of the images. In the arrangement of the photos, he allows 鈥渆ach person to go through their own process of deconstruction and decoding.鈥 To wit: the only caption lies at the very end of After, empowering the audience to come to their own reading. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 undo reading this, and stop seeing from the perspective that someone gave you,鈥 Koll谩r explains.
Nonetheless, central to After is an awareness of impermanence and shifting perspectives. One featured image, for example, was captured after Maria鈥檚 death, but before Koll谩r became aware of it. This serves as a painful demonstration of the fleeting and incomplete nature of our understanding, and the impossibility of ascribing fixed meaning to an image.
The inclination to do so speaks to both the apparent strengths and the limitations of the medium. Photographs carry a certain authority, seeming to mirror reality; as Susan Sontag (On Photography, 1977) writes: 鈥淧hotographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we鈥檙e shown a photograph of it.鈥 Not only is the reality we accept captured by a photographer standing in a fixed place, but the image itself undergoes irrevocable changes. 鈥淧hotographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped […] Newspapers and magazines feature them; cops alphabetize them; museums exhibit them; publishers compile them,鈥 Sontag continues. After similarly plays with the frailty of the medium in the face of manipulation. Without picture titles, captions or structures holding the audience to a specific order or time frame, Koll谩r mitigates a tendency to project a specific meaning onto images. Instead, he encourages viewers to seek understanding beyond the still frame.
In its reflection on permanence (or lack thereof), transition and defining junctures, After hits close to home for audiences dealing with the fallout of a shared disruptive moment. How often do we find ourselves wistfully recounting memories from the “pre-Covid” times, or lamenting the 鈥渘ew normal鈥? Indeed, the pandemic had a profound impact on Koll谩r and his desire to share his book. 鈥淲hen I was putting the pictures together, I thought this would be very difficult to share […] But when I saw the numbers, each representing a death, I thought about how I was in this state because of just one person,鈥 he says, 鈥淭here are few discussions about those who are left behind. This gave me a certain courage to share this book, for all those people who had to pass through grief.鈥
As a medium capturing 鈥渇rozen moments imbued with the presence of now鈥, Koll谩r sees photography as a tool for those dealing with grief. 鈥淲hen you make a portrait of someone who is not there anymore, they are there, in the present of the image. Photography opens up everything. You can walk through the memories, let them flow in your mind.鈥
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Words: Elise Morton
Image Credits:
Martin Koll谩r, images from After by Martin Koll谩r (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK.
