Translated material
In search of my father
In 2017, photo projects on colta.ru will be divided into several blocks. In the second of them, called the “archive”, various types of “archival” images will be presented: photographic series of little -known authors of the recent past, the archives and modern works found and released recently, only mimicating under the archival chronicle or installationly invading the old image. The archive will never be out of place!
In this issue of the “Archive”: the family photo album Natalia Reznik, which has never been.
From the author
I was always interested to see my father, whom I met last time in early childhood, about three years. I decided to try to do it through the photo. I don’t remember how he looked. My image is not preserved in my memory, and I want to try to find it with the help of photography. Create a certain memory for yourself, which was not, the memory of the family.
Mom always dreamed of an ideal man. When we watched the films of the 1960-1970s with French and Italian actors (Belmondo, Delon, Mastroianni, Mare), her eyes light up, and she said: “I always liked such men!”
They met my father in Sochi. It was a resort novel that quickly ended in the wedding. At the same time, the mother knew the father quite a bit: he was a captain of the long -range voyage and worked in the north. They never lived together - he came for a couple of weeks and left back. At some point, his mother was told that he has another wife and child there, and this turned out to be true. She did not forgive her father, and her parents divorced.
Mom had no photographs in the albums of her father. She not only filed for divorce, but also destroyed all the pictures with him, including wedding. But nevertheless, I managed to dig up in some old box a couple of such stripes, consisting of four black and white images that are made in photographs. In the pictures they were together. True, his father was not particularly clearly visible there: small prints, and he is everywhere in the dark glasses a la “aviator”, while similar to young Belmondo. In the photo, he and his mother are joyfully fooling, kissing, their smiles shine. I cut off one card from this strip (my mother did not really like it, and she tried for a long time to find out why I had this picture) and I wear it in my wallet for a long time.
And really, why do I need it? Well, somehow I want to sometimes watch and think that your dad was spectacular, like Belmondo. On occasion, I proudly show this little square to friends (“My parents in the 1970s!”), And they nod approvingly. Even if this photo had never been, it would be worth inventing and doing it in Photoshop.
This is a very personal project, created on the verge of documentary and fictional, where my mother’s dreams are real, and my memory created on their basis is fictitious. In the project, I used old pictures from my mother’s album, creating a new memory of the family “with my father” using images of movie stars of the 1970s.
In 2016, Natalia Reznik released the photo book “In search of my father” , and on June 1, in the Central Executive Committee “Factory” in Moscow, her exhibition of the same name will open.