Chris Marker: Travelers in Time
By Kiša Lala
April 29, 2011
As an avid documentarian Marker had found an ideal recording device which could candidly photograph people in public spaces: a camera embedded in a wristwatch. Armed with this device he could pretend to check the time while discreetly capturing passersby on film. In this new series, taken in the Paris metro, he uses various photo devices to get a similar candid feel.
Though this photo-journalistic technique is not unique, the sum of these images portray people caught in inward journeys, revealing fragments of inner space: A private face, reserved for the time when one is alone, not expecting to be recognized; their bodies sag, their faces are deflated, lacking animation or engagement. People stare through black, opaque windows into the infinite distance.
Sometimes Marker digitally alters the images to enhance their impact - in the Soho Gallery there are 4 portraits of passengers juxtaposed next to historical paintings that draw parallels in aesthetic symmetry. Women are the photographer's preferred subject and Marker projects his ideal onto their vacant public faces.
Many of Marker's works are meditations on the moment, and travelogues that intersect physical space and memory. The 29 minute La jetée (1962), narrated through a series of photo-montages, depicts an experiment in time travel where the protagonist returns to an incident in his memory from his childhood in which he recalls an assassination - which later turns out to be his own. This simple, recursive and haunting plot from the era of French new wave films, precedes by decades, films such as Inception with their overwhelming dependence on digital acrobatics.
Chris Marker, now in his 90's, continues to experiment with new technologies and humour. Also, at the Chelsea gallery, is a folder containing Chris Marker's postcards. This series of postcards of "How a Grinning Cat Visits the HISTORY OF ART" is worth a peek. Some time in late 2001 the graffiti of a grinning cat, called M. Chat, more grin than body, began appearing on the Paris streets - and spreading quickly in notoriety, began to be used on political posters and demonstrations occurring in France at the time. Incidentally, Chris Marker's own cat stars in another of his short "bestiary" films - forming a part of the diverse reveries of this provocative and imaginative filmmaker.
There is a book accompanying the exhibition, Passengers, published by Peter Blum Gallery.
Passengers - April 2-June 4, 2011 at Peter Blum, Soho - 99 Wooster Street & Peter Blum, Chelsea - 526 West 29th Street
Text: www.KisaLala.com
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