Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids
The Russian Andrey Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is one of the greatest directors in film history. Here Italian photographer Chiaramonte and Tarkovsky's son mount a selection of color Polaroids the filmmaker took from 1979 to 1984 of his home, family, and friends in Russia and of places he visited in Italy. His father, Arseny, was a distinguished poet, and judging from the notebook extracts accompanying the pictures, Tarkovsky was no mean poet himself. Like his father, he intuited a holy eternity. Those windows into eternity, the icons of the Orthodox Church, influenced his visual style (hisAndrei Rublevcommemorates the greatest icon painter), and these photos, suffused by the ochre light of late afternoon and so powerfully composed that they argue that supreme artistic visualization was second nature to Tarkovsky, look so timeless and enduring that they inspire worshipful awe. Like some of the imagery ofThe Mirror, the Tarkovsky film these pictures most resemble, some of them tax and frustrate legibility. Always, they affirm a line of Arseny Tarkovsky's, "We are all immortal."Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved