Ristina Tasheva was born in communist Bulgaria and arrived in the Netherlands as an illegal immigrant in 2001. She left the country thinking of earning a little money and returning to her hometown to start her new life. One day a Dutchman asked her, “Are you a communist?” The young woman didn’t know what to think about her question. Was it a condemnation or an approval? The author now has Dutch nationality, but the misunderstanding led to the following publication. Far Away from Home: Voices, Bodies, and Surroundings, a timely and compelling visual exploration of the meaning and drift of ideological utopia. A necessary concept for rebellion against the present, since there will always be failures in development.
Listina Tasheva
Listina Tasheva
Listina Tasheva
Listina Tasheva
“The reason all utopias are depressing is because there is no room for chance, difference, and “miscellaneousness.” Everything is well-ordered and order reigns. There is a design, a place for each thing and a place for each thing,” wrote Georges Perec.This is one of his quotes in which Tasheva finds meaning, and is a reference to the communist resistance and its persecution in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, as well as perpetrated by the communist government in Bulgaria after World War II. We conduct research based on criminal acts and thoroughly shape the form. far from home. Over the course of four years, Tasheva visited Nazi labor and extermination camps in Germany, France and Poland, and with great difficulty, discovered the remains and exact location of the communist concentration camps in her home country that few people talk about. I tried to locate it. She tries to answer the question that’s stuck in her head. “How do they see me as a victim (resistance fighter) or as a perpetrator?” What do they think of me?
With a clean and simple design focused on the book’s content, this voluminous publication features historical archives, collages, drawings, photographs taken by Tasheva, as well as various types of text, written testimonies, and white Consists of an extensive index of background. , a list that gives the whole a certain puzzling atmosphere and alerts us to the many layers and interpretations the story lends itself to. The story of Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch columnist who was executed by guillotine after setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933, takes readers through the twists and turns of the story. Although the true authorship of this fire remains in doubt, it precipitated the rise of Adolf Hitler, who used the event to spread fear of a possible communist revolution. Among the defendants was Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian general secretary of the International Communist Party (Comintern) who later became the first head of the government of the Bulgarian People’s Republic. The image of two militants, two different personalities, in front of the Leipzig court serves as a connecting point between the two opposing sides of the story.
In the black and white images that form the publication, the photographer’s gaze remains neutral and sterile. She dispenses with all figurative language in order to focus on the space itself, the sensations created by traversing extermination camps and monuments, and the collective and individual memories each carries. Similarly, she incorporates drawings made to scale to represent as accurately as possible what life was like in these places.
“How to transcend evil without being seen as the embodiment of good,” the author says in the second section of the book, which introduces a series of collages made from what many consider the best book on anatomical charts . Atlas of topography and applied human anatomy. It was created by Eduard Pernkopf, rector and dean of medicine at the University of Vienna during the Third Reich, using the bodies of prisoners executed in concentration camps, and its reproduction was prohibited in 1994. far from homeThe collage also incorporates the author’s self-portrait. In these images, Tasheva covers his head with mud to obtain a sculptural effect similar to the death masks made by prisoners working in the morgue to preserve the memory of his comrades. This is an approach that simultaneously evokes an empty effect. Something forgotten or manipulated.
The book’s cover is depicted with one of these collages, serving as a metaphor for two contrasting faces that can coexist within one personality. Similarly, the author’s family archives make up the final section of the photobook. “I wanted to know whether my relatives were victims, perpetrators, or so-called ordinary people,” the author explained during a telephone conversation. “This distinction is always very interesting to me because I am very interested in the ambiguity of human nature: how the same person can be both a victim and a perpetrator in different situations. When you are in a comfortable position, it is easy to judge the forces of good or to identify yourself with the forces of good. The line separating good from evil can sometimes be very thin. ”
Far Away from Home: Voices, Bodies, and Surroundings It is an attempt to understand our own history through the history of others. Books about memory leave us with several questions. “What do ideologies like communism and national socialism have in common? And what is their importance to the “average” citizen of Europe? How can different societies organize their memory culture and bring it into critical perspective?” the author asks.
The quote from Primo Levi reminds us: It is essential to know, because if it is impossible to understand, what happened can happen again. The conscience, even ours, can be seduced and veiled again. ”
“Far Away from Home: Voice, Body, and Surroundings” by Ristina Tasheva. Self-published. 459 pages. $76.
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