Intermediate Impressions

A talk with Lena Szankay

Photographic images belong, by definition, to a past and irretrievable

moment. Many theorists and historians have written about the
decisive moment - that fraction of a second that the photographer
records with the shot and then vanishes forever. Only the image
printed on the emulsified film and exposed to light remains as proof,
testimony or memory. Henri Cartier-Bresson constructed his work
around this concept; journalists and documentary photographers
wait for hours with their cameras to capture that one perfect
moment.

On the contrary, the work of Lena Szankay concentrates on the

intermediate times, the reflective gaps when things have already
happened, yet they haven’t advanced. They aren’t action-pictures.
The images are subjective visions, mostly depicting states that
seem to extend to the present while they evoke the past. A feeling
of nostalgia, ambiguous and subtle, imposes on these photos the
strength of the fleeting instant.
Gabriela Schevach: You won First Prize at Arte x Arte. Congratulations.
Lena Szankay: Thank you very much.

GS: I always find it a bit strange to look at an isolated image, the award winning image.
That’s why I wanted to ask you to show us the context of the photo, which has now been
published in several places and is probably going to become known as an unique piece.

LS: Probably. Anyway, to enter you had to submit a folder with five images. I included the
ones that we were going to publish online, except one that belongs to the diptychs series.
I thought that was more fair than sending just one picture because perhaps someone
has a couple of good images, but not a whole body of work at the same level. In this
series, I thought the light and the place were the most special.

GS: Besides, what is a “good image" today? It’s relative.

LS: Yes, that’s true. Although, there’s a general consensus even though it’s difficult to
establish a parameter. There’s an agreement about what constitutes a good image, a
standard image, a image-bank picture and a commercial picture.

GS: I was looking at your website and I have the feeling that it starts with a work that’s
more journalistic: one about the Berlin wall, which is also a historical event.

LS: It’s true, but it’s only because of how I designed the website since the work isn’t
journalistic at all. It’s a bit like an introduction letter. My previous work, No Exit, consisted
of photographing my own body in black and white. I started it while attending Eduardo
Gil’s workshops as my personal project. Then I started school, and I left it because I was
bombarded with theory and technical improvement so I couldn’t take an out-of-focus or
blurry photo.

Then I began to realize that I had been in the streets of Berlin, but I never took any
pictures of the fall of the Berlin wall. It didn’t interest me. At the moment, everybody
ran out with their cameras, while I just went out to have a look. For me it was more
important to listen, not to just observe, but to insert myself. But it’s true- the website’s
portfolio begins with that work and that I later worked at a newspaper, not as a reporter
though (as a photo-editor). But I’ve always considered that my personal work is and was
that and No Exit, the project about scars, that finishes with the diptychs. Now I don’t
want any more scars!

GS: So your relation to photo-journalism is mainly work related, correct?

LS: Yes.
GS: But I don’t see a contradiction. Photo-journalism tends to show a picture in order to
authorize the truthfulness of the text. The picture works in that sense.

LS: As testimony, yes.

GS: It seems to me that your work pushes this sense towards intimacy, but I don’t see
that it goes in the opposite direction.

LS: When I used to go out to shoot pictures in Berlin, I felt what usually happens to
me with photos: the pictures reflect something within myself. Obviously we all have a
special look on things, but I try to have a more subjective look. I was interested in the
breathable environment. I never thought, during that instant, that it would be historical
material. Above all, it discovery moment for me, a new culture. I had moved somewhere
else, so how could I explain what I was experiencing? How could I tell other people where
I ended-up? Looking at my days, the climate, the light. That faint light (of winter) is very
impressive.

That’s why the work that I am doing in Santa Fe has another kind of impact. I think that it
has something to do with the strong lighting, sunlight, blue sky, and contrast, which are
also the conditions of each space, each physical place, each latitude.

GS But it’s easier to notice those differences when you have been elsewhere.

LS: Of course. I realized that people in Argentina take blues skies 60% of every year for
granted. That’s what I missed the most when I lived in Berlin.

GS: I read two articles with photos you had take of the Love Parade- one published by
Die Welt and the other by Clarín. The German paper’s article was titled <i>The ravers are
tired</i>. In Germany, you get to see a lot of photographs of the Love Parade so your
photos accentuated the differences between the typical party pictures and your own
version. Clarín, on the other hand, underlined the carnival and festive aspects.

LS: Yes, it happens. (laughs) The first Love Parade took place in 1989. I came across it in
1990 by accident in Kudamm, and when I arrived home I said, “I’ve seen a very strange
thing: guys were all strangely dressed, the music was great. What was that?" “Ah, don’t
you know? Ravers, a thing called techno." I was still listening to Lou Reed back then, so I
was a bit backwards, charged with 1980s depression. It was later, through friends, that
I got to know the techno scene. And it took me two or three years to decide whether
photograph it or not. Because papers were only spreading the news about the craziness
and girls who lifted their shirts and drugs and all that. Even if that was the truth, I liked
the moments of rest, of tiredness and the loneliness in the crowd, almost a melancholic
thing. But there are also pictures in that series that depict my interest in the materiality
of the clothes, the novelty of the silicone skirts and the corsets and bags of an unknown
material. I was also interested in that.
The primary topic was the body, which resurfaced again. I was looking at all those people.
Somewhere else, in England for instance, I went to a rave and people were different there,
more hippy and psychedelic. In Germany there was something remarkable, those big
blond women who dressed like that. I liked the idea of the monumental body playing with
the Nazis’ idea of the idealized body, that has been heavily criticized. It was also a critic
that people were too blond and white. A lot of interests came together at once.

On the other hand, what happens in Argentina is that people tend to need an Argentine
witness of the events, someone who has experienced it. So things tend to be all put
together in a successive plan: if you have been there, you must have been the most
techno of all technos. There’s always a way to elevate things that aren’t so certain, so
relevant, but that are needed.

GS: I guess distance makes some things hard to grasp. In the sense that you can’t
understand what you haven’t lived.

LS: Besides, the year when I photographed the Loved Parade (1997) was the last year
that it was bearable. It later became something so massive and political. A discussion
began about whether it was a political demonstration or not and whether to make it a
trademark. All of the DJs from the Berliner underground left, they didn’t want to play
there because they considered it pure commerce. Typical, Berlin underground culture
left it. After 1998, it ended. Look at what happened the following year; it was something
completely different. Afterwards the Carnival of Cultures and other little parties emerged
in the space of the original Love Parade but in a smaller, more intimate atmosphere.
The Fuck Parade, for instance, happened the same day at a different location as a
countercultural expression: the squats, Gabba rhythm. It was all a lot more trash and a
lot less “love".

GS: I wonder if you set out to produce a series about the representation of the body or as
a documentation of an event. I don’t think so.

LS: No (laughs). It did happen, however, when I made the decision about the Love Parade.
It was clear that something had to result from that day of work. I remember it as a
titanic task. I shot twelve rolls of negative film and worked non-stop. I knew I wanted to
finish my project in one day. For me that was really important because when I arrived
in Germany, one of the things that changed my way of thinking was seeing how a lot of
people would exhibit work produced in shorter terms. They wouldn’t just show projects
completed in past two to three years, but would exhibit ideas that they developed in just
one or two sessions. For me, that was a big change. I used to think that in order to work
seriously, you had to work for years, that you had to suffer. So that helped me modify my
method. And besides, it was an ephemeral event, and I had no other chance.
I also started to notice that people worked a lot beforehand to develop a project, which
sometimes consisted not just in a subject, but in a formal proposal, something more
limited and pragmatic. Not so emotional. Anyway, I think until now I worked a lot from
the emotional perspective. I need to distance myself from my photographic object.

At first, I suffered a kind of disappointment about the quality of the photography I

saw in Berlin. I had imagined something a lot better. Besides, it happened during a
moment when I was distancing myself from traditional photography and other kinds of
experimentation was happening there, which was hard for me to accept. I understood
that later.

GS: And how did that change come about, that you first had one kind of need and then
another one?

LS: Well, during the seventeen years I lived in Germany, beyond my professional
education, I had no relation with any group, no workshop. I had been alone with
my production, nobody looked at it nor gave me his/her opinion. If I had studied at
Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) or had attended a Fachhochschule (a
specialized school) at Bielefeld, for instance, I would have been in that world all of
the time. In fact, I know a lot of photographers who have studied there and are very
formatted. They’ve read a lot and are very smart. I was completely self-taught. I spent
a great deal of time looking, deciding what I liked and what I didn’t like. That’s how the
change happened.

Now, it has to do with a new period in my life. I am not interested in the same things.

GS: I think your pictures have a lot to do with your own life. You don’t photograph events,
but what remains afterwards.

LS: Yes, or states. I think that’s what moves me to photograph. I always say that I haven’t
lost that magic relation to photography- that’s something very strange that I don’t
really understand. How can a piece of paper trap reality? It’s something elusive. A sort
of beginning that you can start to give form to. I like that cloudy aspect of photography,
although it can also be documentary. The ambiguous. My father used to say that I
photographed the in-between. He explained to me what that meant in philosophy.
The other day, after the awards ceremony for Arte x Arte, a TV channel asked me how
captured point zero. I responded with a face that read, “I don’t understand what you
are talking about." And they told me that point zero is, “when something has finished
and something else is about to begin." I answered that, for me, that is the medium,
the photographic device, and what’s intrinsic to photography. Well, that’s my way of
employing it.

I’m also very interested in narration. I liked poetry when I was younger and that’s why
I started to study literature. I would have liked to write more. Someone also asked me
about the fantasy of that I construct. I’ve transcended that idea to photography, I believe.
Narration in the sense that I don’t want the picture to be gone once you’ve seen it, after
the shot. That’s always my intention. I also enter a trance-like state when I shoot that
completely exhausts me . It’s a kind of concentration that involves the body. I assume a
posture and my body hurts afterwards. Sometimes I don’t even remember pressing the
trigger.

GS: The trigger caught something that your head couldn’t exactly follow. For me, it’s
exciting to find that distance between what you think you’ve done and what the camera
has captured.

LS: Yes. Obviously, you start to control the surprise factor more and more. Although,
I haven’t once said, “This is going to be a great photo." Above all, with No Exit, which
came out of self-portrait sessions that I did at home, I used to tell myself, “I feel like
taking pictures." So I wondered what background to use, or what to do, if dancing,
dressing-up, getting naked, suffering, crying, all that. Then I looked at the contact sheet
and woud say, “This is good. This one too." So, what happened? It had to do with the
self-timer situation where you can’t control a great deal of things. Perhaps something
good develops because a leg is still in the air or there is an out-of-focus light that gives
it the special touch. And I must insist that I’m not just taking one photo that has to be
good and that’s that. I experiment. We couldn’t control it before digital so there was the
waiting, the disappointments or the great surprises. I loved that.

GS: Yes. And with black and white what you get will never be the same as what you see.

An article describes your style of photography as a “contemplative detention of

absence." (laughs)

LS: In 2003-2004, I began to realize in that the subject of absence was in my pictures
because I hadn’t realized that before. Upon returning to Argentina, it started to get mixed
into thing I didn’t want it to mix with. For example, the missing people (desaparecidos) or
the Argentina that could have been and didn’t happen. I realized that there was a general
discourse in the art world that if you accomplished that, you were smart. So it started
to bother me because it wasn’t my intention. Absence, in my work, relates to something
more private and personal, which only indirectly has something to do with the military
government or whatever.

But it all stems from my own life story: having lived in many countries, the fact that
my father has always lived far away, that in my family nothing was ever complete, that
something was always missing, the fact that such a something was incorporated in daily
life. That is to say, absence becomes tangible. I think it has to do with that.
“Contemplative of absence." Yes, sounds passive, but for instance the picture of my
father’s armchair that I shot said, “Well, when he’s not here any more, this photo is going
to stand for all the times I’ve seen him reading there." It replaces an image of him. The
absence of the visible-invisible: I’ve been coming across texts on the internet or things I
find here in Argentina where that’s a recurring topic. It doesn’t exist in Germany.

GS: I think in general, in Germany everything tends to be less sentimental. I’m referring
to the discursive. Maybe it’s related to or results in these more tangible, concrete and
pragmatic projects.

LS: Yes. Perhaps it relates to the social-political critique that I think is their historical
heritage. I have a lot of photographer friends that go to holiday resorts that Germans
usually frequent, and they shoot series of Germans getting drunk in Mallorca. The
photos are fantastic; however, they are related to a social critique or to the construction
of perfect societies where even free time is organized. They do works about the fall of
the Soviet Union. There are other projects that deal with urban society and the political
management of public spaces. In a sense, it’s anchored in the social, not so much in the
personal.

Well, anyway, it bothers me a little bit when I’m told that “your work is very self-
referential." It’s because I feel it implies believing that I’m practicing psycho-therapy with
photos.

GS: As if they had value only for oneself.

In your images something has been there but isn’t any more. That is what gets perceived.
I don’t know if it’s absence or emptiness or something past. I wanted to ask you what do
you consider the values of photography?

LS: Mmmh, it’s interesting but hard to answer.

GS: Or why take pictures and not do something else?

LS: Photo has something unique. It’s a solitary action. I think it’s good inasmuch as I’m in
a situation where I can do what I want and have the freedom to do things my way. On the
other hand, it has to do with an attitude of exposing certain subjects that are easier to
show than if you are working with a group of people doing, for example, film. In that case,
you would have to explain a lot more. As it is something immediate, that you can execute
quickly, I do it and then relax. I don’t like production and preparation very much. Photos
are good for what I need to say. In principle, it stays in a box and I decide whether it gets
shown or not.

GS: But, for instance, in the Santa Fe pictures, the scenography is a house where people
live but where everything is set up for a portrait. For me, this is perfect for your style in
the sense that crosses reality and fantasy. At the same time, that setting belongs to the
past but is used in the present.

LS: My look points toward the melancholic and what is fascinating is precisely that place,
the temporal mixture. Besides, that décor is not used today in the same manner. It’s
not like a person stands against a column and his/her portrait is taken. It’s employed
for nudes, couples, something else. And it’s a very magical place for me- where I mix
an admiration for things that have ceased to exist in other places but can still be found
in Argentina, though in a putrid state. It’s also a tribute to the photography of the last
century. Now with the digital picture established, I take pictures in 6 x 6. Besides, once
you know what you want to do, it’s easy. You see it. You recognize it. It’s there, it appears
in front of you.

And provincial life, too. I’m from the capital and I get captivated by things that they (the
people from Santa Fe) find depressing. They think they should modernize. I look at that
romantically.

I like to work like this. Sometimes I would like to radically change and be more daring,
moving away from the ceremonial. But clearly I have a respectful relationship with
photography. It’s hard for me to intervene a picture or paint on its surface. My respect
comes from the trade, the carefulness. I trained at a Photo Academy there (in Germany)
and they stuck that on me. (laughs)

GS: And you’re not content with that?

LS: No (laughs).

I’m just in a transition period. I’ve finished Mimesis, the diptychs.

Now I feel that the Santa Fe project is going to end up being something else. In January
I will start taking pictures for a group grant awarded by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes
with a young architect from there, Sebastián Zelaya, and a DJ, Rodrigo Díaz. I asked him
to start recording sounds, birds, water, etc. I want to make an audiovisual piece and that
would mean a great change, incorporating music and especially designed sound where
you can see life for me is like in Santa Fe, the people, and their portraits.

The project is titled Zona, Contexto, Lugar (Zone, Context, Place) and is based on a book
by Juan José Saer, in which there are two characters talking to each other. One of them is
going to leave. I don’t remember to where. He says he’s going to miss the area. The other
one asks what area and what’s the difference between the next one, X. The idea is to
start to discuss the frontiers that define the zones, the center, and the periphery. Being
an architect, Sebastián Zelaya will take on that angle.
It all started because I said that the most bizarre architecture that I have seen in my life
is in Santa Fe. I know I won’t do a series about bizarre buildings there, only a couple of
pictures perhaps. Zelaya does night pictures, and I shoot portraits. In the mix, we have to
see how it unites. That is the new work I want to do. It’s less personal, more testimonial.
Maybe like the Berlin wall pictures but I want these to have sound. The people are
different and the water and the rivers are more present. I’ll have to go there.

GS: There it is.

LS: There it is.

Interview by Gabriela Schevach for Juanele

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