KlavdijSluban crosses the abandoned cities of the Far East on foot: Where are the inhabitants? Some remain, cocooned in the fog, a few animals, fleeing or backs to the wall. Searching for human beings, the photographer continues beyond Europe, penetrating Asia, Russia, Mongolia and China on the TransSiberian, but meets no human agglomeration. Everywhere geography predominates, rendering the human race negligible.
The photographer is nostalgic for the mothering snow of his childhood, surrounding him on his piece of land, but here the snow is leprosy, painted white. It does not cover the ground, but gnaws away at it. Its silence is oppressive. Only rarely does the photographer use a rapid exposure to freeze a gesture, a movement. More often, he pauses on the closed diaphragm, letting silence impregnate the film. Stillness needs more time to settle. Stillness is the state of grace of the messianic moment, not the exaltation of an advent, but the end of a race. One of the last photographs serves as a portrait of our time, a woman's face, lips slightly apart to kiss nothingness, reversed in a reflection. Her eyes fix a point that separates her irrevocably. This is how the entire Orient regards the West. It is the most silent regard of the entire series, offering and demanding salvation and silencing those who observe it.
Excerpt from Erri de Luca's preface for the book ‘Transsibériades', published by Editons ActesSud.
The photographer is nostalgic for the mothering snow of his childhood, surrounding him on his piece of land, but here the snow is leprosy, painted white. It does not cover the ground, but gnaws away at it. Its silence is oppressive. Only rarely does the photographer use a rapid exposure to freeze a gesture, a movement. More often, he pauses on the closed diaphragm, letting silence impregnate the film. Stillness needs more time to settle. Stillness is the state of grace of the messianic moment, not the exaltation of an advent, but the end of a race. One of the last photographs serves as a portrait of our time, a woman's face, lips slightly apart to kiss nothingness, reversed in a reflection. Her eyes fix a point that separates her irrevocably. This is how the entire Orient regards the West. It is the most silent regard of the entire series, offering and demanding salvation and silencing those who observe it.
Excerpt from Erri de Luca's preface for the book ‘Transsibériades', published by Editons ActesSud.
