On necessity and the polaroids of Cy Twombly.
Dear Friends,
At the moment Cy Twombly’s Polaroids touch me deeply. They are images of his studio in Gaeta and landscapes. Twombly photographed the rooms in his house, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and the sea in soft tones. I feel the warmth of the late afternoon and smell jasmine and lemon blossom when I look at the images. His photos seem to have been created without much effort, that is immediately visible. But the process that followed was intensive. To protect his photos from fading, he had them re-photographed and printed using the Fresson technique, which adds an extra layer of mystery to the images.
During my studies, I had my academy-acclaimed portfolio reviewed by Foam, the Photography Museum Amsterdam, at a pop-up event. The reviewer was incognito. Why that was the case is still not clear to me, but what she said about my work completely changed my view of photography. She asked me only one question: “What is the necessity?”. I knew enough. From that moment on, everything had to change.
And now the beauty of Cy Twombly’s images. At a time when post-liberal societies are emerging, where power is above law and every country seems to be going for itself, beauty can be a form of escapism, or a subtle form of resistance. As the Dutch poet Henriëtte Roland Holst wrote: “The soft forces will certainly win / in the end” (from Opgang III, 1918).
Stay strong,
Mémé