New | Review | Liminal Images: Photomontages by Sarvesh Wahie and Andrea Geyer

                                                                             

Winterbad

 A photograph is a mystery. It obscures what comes before and after, focusing instead on an elusive present, which according to Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness is in ‘perpetual flight in the face of being’. As soon as the picture is taken, it becomes past; a memory; a symbol of something.

 

But photographs are also melancholic. In his book, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes, links photographs to death. Photographs contain the seed of death. They presuppose death. Death haunts every photograph, with its finality, and irrevocability; death gives it a sense of pathos. We know what the photograph contains has already passed and the subject is going to be extinct some day in the future. 

 

A photograph is a residue of time and space. Unlike in painting, a photographer must be present when he or she takes a photograph. A painting can be made from a memory or a dream, but not a photograph. It becomes a memory after it is taken and acquires its dream-like quality, due to its existence in a perpetual present.  

According to Susan Sontag, in On Photography, a photograph is a ‘pseudo-presence’ and a ‘token of absence’. Their interplay intrigues us. The photograph presents to us only one possibility of the ontology of the subject, obscuring all the others but we can intuit the absence of the other possibilities.

According to Barthes, photographs contain what he calls a ‘punctum’. It is the unpredictable element in a photograph. It opens to us the hidden layers concealed within a photograph. It could be the crossed arms of a subject, a crooked smile, the angle at which someone is sitting; someone’s ill-fitting shoes. The Punctum reveals to us the truth of the photograph; it invariably disturbs us.                                             

                                                                         Some of these things could be said about the photomontages presented by Sarvesh Wahie and Andrea Geyer, last year at a café in Jena in Germany. Used first by the Dadaists, photomontages allow photography to transcend time and space, by merging different photographs. They alter the individual character of a photograph by merging it with others and heighten their surreal nature. Everything happens at once, allowing the photographs merged together to construct a reality with more depth.

This is how they describe their work: "Biderschichten (Image layers) are photographic surfaces that are intertwined, until the image components present in them merge and make certain contexts appear. Outlines from everyday life are thus transformed into into unusual but nevertheless recognizable shapes. This possibility of image composition is not possible with either single-shot photographs or the technique of double exposure. Image layers therefore require a digital approach, which allows for a wide range of design possibilities. Accordingly, such images can also be described as 'photo fusions' or 'digital paintings'.

The motifs they contain come from the common living environment of urban buildings, flora and fauna, human activities. the seasons,  and times of day. They are selected through methodical observation and exploration and flow into the into the design process. The resulting layers of images show - although immersed in the plurality of motifs - a uniform composition of specific situations, feelings or even stories."
  

In one such photomontage, we see a window, flanked by curtains, resembling a train window. Light strains through one of the curtains, a soft, gentle light. The view from outside the window is blurred, bathed in a bluish tint. A leaf or a feather is stuck to the glass pane, suggesting resilience. It could denote the fragility of human existence, surrounded by suffering suggested by the bluish tint outside. The train window could also symbolize an existence in transition, or transformation, through movement and arrival at the destination.

                                                                               

Federbanane

In another, we encounter a bleak landscape, surrounded by grim blocks of rock and stone and old buildings, barbed wires, and thorny bushes.  An old man dressed in a suit and a hat peers into nowhere. The image is superimposed with that of a bat. It suggests an apocalyptic landscape, and the bleakness of the surroundings accentuates the hopelessness of the situation. 

                                                                          

Awaiting Snow

  

In a similar photomontage, we see an undulating landscape, with hills and rocks, covered with bushes and vegetation. The bottom part is almost entirely dark but the sky is suffused with a twilight-like aura. A solitary figure climbs a hill, in the middle of the photograph. It makes one think of Sisyphus, preparing to roll up the boulder, taking a pause from the strain of his efforts that are endless. 

                                                                                 

Jenaer Spaziergang

 

Some of the photomontages show the jumbled-up existence of a big city. In one we see a train passing by, and an auto-rickshaw in one corner; a tall building rises in the middle of image, with footbridges crisscrossing overhead. It suggests the kinetic dynamism of a metropolis, and the pace at which things happen in such a space. It has a dizzying feel. 

                                                                            

Delhi Type

 

Another arresting image is that of a woman’s face. One half of the face is serrated, as if carved by a knife, or crumpled like paper. One eye is open and the other is covered in darkness, tinged with yellow. Is it the face of a woman who has suffered domestic violence? Despite the suggestion of violence, there is a determination, or even defiance, in the look. It is a haunting photograph. In Barthes’ terminology, the Punctum could be the serrated edges over one of the eyes.   

                                                                          

Eisen

 

Several of the photomontages displayed have a transitory quality to them – they capture movement, which is not something a solitary, still photograph can do very well; as mentioned above, it hints at potential transformation. Quite a few of them have bleak surroundings, perhaps a metaphor for industrialized societies facing the brunt of climate change, and rise of authoritarianism. But often, there is hope, in the form of a feather, for example, or simply through human determination.  

 

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