Andrei Tarkovksy’s films are beautiful, beguiling reflections on human nature. Now a collection of Polaroid pictures has resurfaced, offering a glimpse into the filmmaker’s own world: his wife, his son, his dog and the beauty of everyday life.
s READ MORE“Tarkovsky for me is the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” — Ingmar Bergman
For all their poetic metaphors and primordial imagery, Andrei Tarkovsky’s films are about reality. Even the virtual reality of Solaris is more nostalgic than futuristic. Time is an omnipresent theme in the Russian ex-pat’s oeuvre—only seven works, thanks to Soviet censorship—which encompasses not Hollywood movies, but far-reaching reflections on human nature. They are beautiful, beguiling…and move at a glacial pace.
So it may come as a surprise that Tarkovsky thought to pick up a Polaroid, a camera that stops, and tightly crops, time. The photographs—originally published in Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids; new ones have recently resurfaced—are mesmerizing vignettes that capture the filmmaker’s life from 1979 to 1984: his wife standing in a sun-dappled lawn, his son ensconced on a box of firewood, his German Shepherd keeping vigil as mist settles on a moor. As with his moving images, Tarkovsky’s snapshots shed light on the subtle beauty of everyday life. They are perhaps not as complex, but no less cinematic.
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Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids is published by Thames and Hudson
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