Present Traces of a Past Existence-A Photographic Research [extrait/extract] / LUCREZIA ZANARDI

Lucrezia Zanardi With texts and index curated by Lucrezia Zanardi and Dr. Alexandra H.M. Nagel

A Photographic Research

Present Traces of a Past Existence:

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Etty Hillesum started her diary on Sunday March 9, 1941, in Amsterdam. She had studied law, but had a passion for Russian literature, and was, at that point, continuing with her study of Slavic languages. She began writing a diary on the advice of the psychochirologist Julius Spier (1887 — 1942), with whom Hillesum had just begun therapy.

Taken together, the collected diaries show Hillesum’s deep inner transformation, and manifest her keen literary talent.

On September 7, 1943, Etty Hillesum was deported along with her parents and youngest brother to Auschwitz.

Before her departure, she left her diaries in the hands of friends, hoping that someday they would be published.

A selection gleaned from her difficult handwriting was first published in 1981. Today, her words have been translated into more than seventeen languages.

I began my work with the images in the Hillesum archive hoping to explore the limits of the shots and their materiality. How were the pictures framed? What was their condition? Were there any notes on the back? In the archive, there were also letters, copied fragments of books, notes

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of hand-analyses conducted by Julius Spier and often typed

by Hillesum, and a few stencils. I noticed the color of the ink, an occasional coffee trace, a few doodles. Spier’s report of his analysis of Hillesum’s hands — written up during their first encounter on February 3, 1941 — seemed profound. It is with good reason that Alexandra Nagel contends that this document is the prologue to Hillesum’s diaries. Without that first encounter, Hillesum would not have found the focus that allowed her to elaborate her thoughts and feelings on the blank pages of a notebook.

Once steeped in archival material, I shifted my focus from the archive to the outside world. I organized trips to Middelburg, the Netherlands, where Hillesum was born, and to Camp Westerbork, in the northeast of the country where Hillesum was interned before she was deported to Auschwitz. I tracked down and researched the houses where she had lived, and the spaces that may have influenced her perception. This kind of ethnographic research meant that I worked on visuals in particular and tried to decode fragments of the atmosphere in which she had dwelled. Sometimes, the people who now live in the houses were Hillesum once lived, were aware of her writings. If they were not, I took pleasure in telling them about her.

In the meantime, I wondered: what happens to a space once it has been inhabited for many years by different people? Could the presence of a previous tenant still be sensed in any way? Is space something architectural, or does it pervade the acts of the subjects themselves? Can a space be bound to the subjectivity of former occupants?

The photographic research that I present here is a dynamic

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framework within which to explore these open questions.

For me there was no substantial difference between my approach to the archive and my approach to the houses where Etty Hillesum lived. The two inquiries complement each other. There is a dialogue that can be reconstructed between the objects in the archive and the space where they were produced or used. I believe that in one way or another, these spaces relate. In fact, a house itself can be considered an archive of ‘presences of the past’. It is certainly the archive of its present inhabitants. A house is a space where people create and assemble their private universe. In this way, objects in houses, ranging from personal items to structural elements like windows and stairs, can be seen as extensions of human beings.

When we study a photograph, we use actual traces on the surface of the print to search for a possible past, but we also create the present from the image. In other words, a presumed historical meaning can be shifted. Studying the past is an activity that happens in the present and may have consequences for observations that will happen in the future. Therefore, today’s gaze can become the bearer of new tensions that are capable of suggesting a new perspective on the past. A shift in perspective is, therefore, also a political act. It can modify the way in which the past is viewed in the present.

Houses, as well as archival documents, are fragments of a past that have reached us. They are readable as the stratification and sedimentation of a deeper memory, that only returns to the present if we are willing to reactivate it.

[LZ]

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Mädchen 27 Jahre.

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enorm verschiedene Hände: Eltern sehr verschieden.

Rechte Hand übernervös, übererregbar, sehr sensibel, verkehrt immer in größer Anspannung.

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20.08.2017

E quindi eccoci qui.

Secondo viaggio interiore. Seconda prova di srittura giornaliera, pensata, non pensata, scivolante e strabordante.

Testa per aria, labbra febbricitanti, corpo dormiente.

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Musikalische Hand.

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Viele Begabungen, aber auf keinem Gebiet etwas fertig geschafft.

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Das Gefühl wird vom Denken unterbrochen.

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Alle Finger zum Denken hingerichtet.

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20.08.2017

E quindi eccoci qui. Secondo viaggio interiore.

Seconda prova di srittura giornaliera, pensata, non pensata, scivolante e strabordante.

Testa per aria, labbra febbricitanti, corpo dormiente.

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Künstlerische Begabung.

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Weil tiefangesetzt, spielt Fantasie eine große Rolle.

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Vitalität. Objekt nützt sie aber nicht aus.

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17-18 J.: schiefgegangenes Erlebnis.

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