We live the present
by answering the challenges or resisting them, changing
the intentions into an act, accomplishing projects.
Between the past intention and the future achievement,
the present is the evanescence slipping through our
fingers. At some point we discover that, becoming past,
that present “affected” us, by printing itself on our
memory. We retain the traces of the past, although we
didn’t record them voluntarily. But other people are
living the present in order to capture it: the
chronicler and the photographer.
The events are
always lived by individuals. They always print personal
memories. But, although we had other experiences and our
memories are peopled with different elements, the logic
of the printing is the same.
The chronicler’s
memory functions by other rules. On the one hand, the
printing is made voluntarily, is oriented, inscribed in
a teleology, involving a simultaneously living of the
event and its meaning. On the other hand, the present
leaves a mark in the individual, not to speak about a
community. The event is registered by a personal memory,
but its meaning is not integrated in a personal story,
but in a collective story. By inscribing itself in a
project meant for the other (the present thought for a
community), the chronicle is an altruist discourse.
In the case of the
photograph, the present prints simultaneously a
photosensitive support and a personal memory (the one of
the photographer). Apparently this is the great
difference between photography and the traditional
chronicle. The latter does not involve a double printing1.
In reality, in the photographical act, although the two
printed supports (the personal memory and the
photo-sensitive surface) are distinct, the process
borders of the printing are not clearly divided.
The personal
photographs do not get the chronicle condition just
because they are speeches about and for the photographer
(the event captured in a photograph integrates itself in
a personal story, although, at the time of its
recording, nobody knows the meaning of this story).The
photographs created for the public collections are
intended, from the beginning, for another look.
The defining
element of a chronicle is its skill to present itself as
an objective speech, a neutral registration of the
reality. In this regard, through the nature of the
support, the photograph has a small hold over the
traditional chronicle.
The impartiality of
a speech inscribes itself in the frame of a fiduciary
contract with a receiver. Because of its sign oriented
status (displaying the physical-chemical nature of the
printing process), the photograph has been traditionally
invested with the values of the spontaneity, evidence,
transparence, innocence, impartiality, validity, being
interpreted as a support that offers direct access to a
past which is spatially preserved, as a material
trace.The referential quality of a photograph is
justified by the index quality2
of the photograph and not by the presence of a glance,
which makes it possible.
The human instance,
which proposes in fact the contract, was banished in the
background. The photography discourse becomes slippery
not by the fact that it suppresses the human instance,
but by the fact that it conceals it, keeps it silent.
Inciting the forgetfulness of this instance, the
photography cancels the negotiation, and, in this way,
the contract itself.
The camouflaged
violence of the photograph is in contrast to the
undisguised violence (although of another nature) of the
traditional chronicle. Which does not establish the
impartiality of the speech by the nature of the support
which registers it (this being impossible), but by
displaying the instance that proposes the contract,
origin of the enunciation and witness of the event, that
“someone who was there”, living the present directly3
and unrepeated.
The chronicle is
the enunciation that makes a show of its own way of
working, the chronicler who makes it possible and
assumes it constantly, someone who makes the past
possible, changing the present into a speech. By
suggesting you to believe him, because it is the only
way to have access to the past. The violence of the
traditional chronicle is the speech violence that gives
you the freedom of choice4.
Paradoxically, not
the objective strategies of the speech – perfidiously
(the photography) or directly (the traditional
chronicle) - are the ones to establish the fiduciary
contract, but the existence of the speech itself. The
chronicler obtains the convention of the receiver
through the selflessness of his gesture: he registers
the present for an instance from the future. The
absolute gratuitous opening to some, still unknown,
future receiver of the chronicle makes possible the
objectiveness of the speech.
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Nicolae Ionescu5
- the Chronicler Photographer
The status of
Nicolae Ionescu as a chronicler is justified by his work
of recording (by means of photographers) of a present
(inter-war) Romania, transforming it into a document
dedicated to a community, by placing it in the space of
the museum. As at that time there was no museum of
photography in Romania, Ionescu foresaw in his thoughts
the setting up of such a space. We guess that this has
been meant as a history museum (although this shelters
tokens of the past, while Ionescu records the present –
which he actually transforms into past, preparing it for
a view from the future). We are certain, however, that
he did not think this space as an art museum6.
As a physical
space, Ionescu’s museum was never accomplished but we
can trace back his logic by starting from the corpus of
objects it should have sheltered: the photographs. These
are tokens of the present, recorded by an instance,
which is living it, but destined to the community
history, being thus thought as documents. This is how
the obsession of the museum is justified, the space that
changes every testimony into a document.
As any chronicle,
Ionescu’s discourse claims to be objective. The major
strategy of the fiduciary contract exists: the
destination of his archive has been, from the beginning,
the public space. Besides, the testimony being made
through the photography, the discussion about its
indexical function is momentarily brought up to date.
But what assures the originality of this photographic
archive is the way Ionescu succeeded in intensifying the
data of the fiduciary contract using borrowed additional
strategies, by way of classical cinematography7
from the aesthetics of the realistic novel.
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The Omniscient Narrator
In relation with
the world he captures, the photographer is the
omniscient and invisible narrator. As Genette would say:
extradiegetical. Absolute, panoptical, infallible look,
whose access to the visible is not blocked by anything.
His hunger for the visible determines him to accomplish
the ensemble. The photography invades the places, to the
point that it merges with the urban scenery. The
receiver’s view is oversaturated by the visible.
The great absence
of this world is, however, the very look that makes
possible the visible. The instance pulling the strings
makes sure to erase its traces. The shadow or parts of
the body never enter the frame. More than that, it
avoids looks pointed towards it (therefore complicity
with the subject of photography), abiding by the
unwritten movie rule, which forbids the actor to look
into the camera, in order not to destroy the close
universe of the narration. With the intention of not
challenging the look of the viewer, Ionescu will always
keep it at a distance, avoiding the foreground and the
close-up view. In order not to draw the attention, it
makes use of small-size devices. Although this is what
he always does, it never gives the impression he enters
other people’s space. The innocence of his look is, in
the reality, utmost indiscretion. There is certain
violence in this look by the very fact that it surprises
without warning. It acts as if it would not interfere
with people’s lives, thus permitting him not to assume
any responsibility for the people he photographs.
By avoiding the
look of the other, he retains, at the same time, his
private space8.The
hunger for the visible (scopophilia) is accompanied by
the wish for the anonymity (scopophobia) of a pure
subject, a beneficiary of the right to see without being
seen. Although it does not have anything sensual9
in it, Ionescu’s look is the look of a voyeur. And this
voyeur is certainly feeling uneasily in the moment he
gets caught. The look of the other towards the objective
of the camera makes some recognition possible: the other
knows he or she is being photographed because it catches
the acting look of the photographer (boys with the Star,
the flower girls, the organ grinder). And this
recognition transforms the other from watched object
into a subject carrying a look.
In Ionescu’s world
there are four types of looks orientated towards the
camera:
-
An amazed
look, a slight startle of the subject in whose
visual field someone entered (the photographer), a
simple sign of attention that did not transform into
an intentional look. The photographer was at the
boundary between being seen and passing unseen.
-
A surprising
look, the apparition of a smile that
demonstrates that the subject has passed the phase
of amazement, sign that the photographer was seen
(sometimes, the subject does not even look at the
camera, but he smiles, sign that he knows: “The Mot
with his horse”, “Road Sledge”).
-
A look that
poses, intentionally looking towards the camera:
the girls at Lido, the salep salesman, the garlic
salesman and the look on the faces of the people in
the car at the gas station.
-
A casual
look, pertaining not to the subject, but to a
character found in the back field who accidentally
was caught inside the frame, intercepting the look
of the photographer pointed at another objective:
“The Goat Milk”, “Sorcova”.
The photographer
avoids the contact with an intentional look, because
that does not apply for a social answer that the
photographer refuses, as he refuses also to unveil,
through looking, the privacy of the other.
Ionescu represents
the casual look, the neutral observer10,
the detached auditor, capturing the reality offered to
him, without experiencing, he never involves in the
events, is not interested in emotions, personal drama,
and avoids the placement of an affective print of the
reality that he records. The photographer wishes to
capture a social mask and this is why the object of his
look must remain unknown. Besides, the greatest danger
around a photo camera is that the people will give up
the social mask not for revealing something private, bur
for adopting another mask: “for the photographer”.
The omniscient
photographer realizes the totality through the general
views that map the zone (strategies for visual mapping),
recording, on the plane surface of the photo, the
profound as a space situated at a certain distance. The
look possesses the city11:
The Central Market, Magheru, Calea Victoriei, without
the image containing space hints regarding the placement
of this all mighty buildings (the photography was taken
from up a balcony, maybe even the roof of a building,
but this fact cannot be stated precisely). These
panoramic sights are somehow de-centered, the look being
spread diffusely above the entire visual space.
Within the series
dedicated to the market or the fair, the general views
are doubled by partial views that capture the entrances,
the exits, the component elements and the vicinities.
The real is registered segment by segment. The visible
does not record discontinuities. The look focuses,
checks the profound passing from one synthetic vision of
the space to an analytical one. The urban reality is
captured from high above (a roller-coaster, for
example), from earth level (street view) or underneath
(“the view of the worm”, from the pictures of the
great collecting channel of from the channel
Razoare-Panduri, which seems to function as a vinery).
The registering of
the reality implies differences of scale, each
modification of the proportions bringing about gains and
losses of information, correlated to the preceding
image. The view is placed (the text that accompanies the
photo mentions the place from where it operates and the
focus of the view), or it moves.
The framing is the
way through which reality affirms its presence in the
space of the representation. The framing helps the
photographer to establish the distance that separates
him from the objects, or offer spatial variations of a
visible segment. A building, for example, can be
captured in a wide view (panorama), or in middle-facing
view (which confers monumentality: The Athenaeum, The
Antim Palace), or lateral (The Patriarchy, the
Stavropoleos).
Ionescu’s framings
are extremely rigorous. The sensation of arbitrariness
or negligence appears in the cases of the photos taken
“when walking” (see the picture “The
Florists”). The image seems to be a photogram
extracted from a traveling scene, sign that the
cinematography has placed its print on the way Ionescu
saw the urban landscape.
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The technique of the flash
The esthetics of
the flash (cultivated in the same period by Andre
Kertesz, the master of Brassaï), contributes to the
cementation of the sensation of objectivity. The street
photographs create the sensation that things just merely
happen, and that the photographer does nothing else but
to record. Ionescu thus cultivates his own image of a
wandering photographer.
However, the flash
implies a certain lack of composition, which does not
happen in the case of Ionescu’s photos, which have
compositions that are extremely rigorous, almost looked
for, although he is not an imagist.
Ionescu manages to
place into harmony the harshness of the composition with
the technique of the flash through a sort of intuition a
la Cartier-Bresson, which helps him to compose
“by-the-eye”, to permanently evaluate the every-day, to
select “the decisive moment”, a fact which can also be
explained through financial reasons. He was obliged to
train his eye for that the paper and the photographical
films were highly expensive, so that he could not afford
to miss.
In Ionescu’s world,
the elements of the real seem as important. The same
carefulness for the composition is to be found within
the image of the Athenaeum, as well as in the image of
the garlic salesman. There are no decisive elements
because everything is important. The fact that
everything is visible in a world in which hierarchies
seem to miss, makes one think about that. The visible is
always constituted by a cognitive view, by a look which
is assiduous, which inquires, chooses. This world that
seems to remain under the sign of the absolute visible,
does not represent but a choice operated through a look
at the urban landscape. The photographer operated some
selections in the visible.
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The Logic of the Series
We will try to
reconstruct the logic, by starting from the elements we
dispose of: the archive that Ionescu himself organized
by placing his photos under thematic series. By
characterizing the structure of the archive, the logic
of the series did not precede the realization of the
respective but constructed it in parallel with the
archive and through the archive.
Ionescu’s
photographs record a lived time, a chaotic present.
Which should not make sense but only when viewed from
the future, meaning written, in the past, during a
certain phase of time. Paradoxically, although he
archives the present, Ionescu obtains a chronic in which
he does not constrain the chaos. The archive in itself
will offer us an answer, the way in which the
accumulation of the photos was realized. The first
photos date in the 20’s and are isolated elements. They
assert the theme of the series. Follows a year in which
Ionescu massively photographs on the given theme: 1925—Moşii,
1928—churches, statues and monuments. Then, until about
the end of the 30’s, isolated photographs complete the
inventory.
The initial element
is the most important because it has the strength to
trigger the thematic series. It asserts the logic, the
project the teleology in which afterwards elements of
the series will be submitted. Yet, it remains a mystery
the way in which Ionescu chooses this prime element.
Here would also exist an explanation: Ionescu’s look is
fascinated by the visible. But the fascination implies a
double movement: from the view towards the object and
from the object towards the view. The sight does not
become a view until the moment, in which something
activates it as an intention, and the object must be
strong enough to strike up the onlooker. It seems that
the prime element of this series had the strength to
call forth Ionescu’s view, determining an attitude: the
act of photography. The element that starts the process
of selection for any series pertains to the urban
landscape.
The logic of the
series will allow the photographer that, from the
meaningless passing of reality, he would choose some
elements which, cumulated, construct the archive,
justifying the logic. The movement is circular: the
logic makes the collection possible, but only the
archive in its final state places the logic into scene.
The Nicolae Ionescu
collection dedicated to Bucharest, contains photos which
were realized during more than two decades, capturing
topoi which mediate the acknowledgment of the city:
monuments (urban sculptures in a site: The Monument of
the Airmen, the statue of Mihai Viteazul in front of the
University, The Monument of the French Soldiers in
Cişmigiu Park, the bust of Golescu in the Garden of the
Athenaeum), churches, church-yards (thus recovering the
private memory of the city; the recovered past is not
the historical one, for when they appear the ruins are
recent, the town is new), monasteries, hotels, inns,
museums, markets, fairs, boulevards, streets, alleys,
foundations, public buildings (The Athenaeum, The
Academy Library, The Old Conservatory, The Cantacuzino
Institute, The Marmorosch Bank, The Palace of Justice,
The Academy, The Royal Palace, The State Archives, The
Ministerial Departments, The Medico-Legal Institute, The
University Foundation, The Headquarters of the
Newspapers as follows: “Adevărul”—“The Truth”,
“Universul”—“The Universe”, “Dimineaţa”—“The morning” )
The topoi,
representing the physic part of the city, are grouped
into thematic series and form a sort of static lexicon
of this world.
But the serial
thinking does not stop here. The elements of the
thematic supra-series fluctuate synchronically and
diachronically, instituting the two types of series:
Examples of Quantitative Series
Transportation
The archive
contains an inventory of the forms of transportation
during the inter-war period: the horse-tram, the
electric tram, the cart, the bus, the vehicle and the
carriage (with the variants of the curricle and the
“braşoveanca”—a specific, regional type of
carriage on two wheels). There is an evident
relationship of homology between the type of
transportation form used and the social class of the
possessor. The people living in the periphery cannot
afford transportation. The one owning a carriage already
holds an advanced social position within one’s class,
although, in this area, it is not the symbolic function
which is dominant, but the utilitarian function: the
carriage is used to carry the merchandise to the market.
The symbolic side
prevails in the case of the dominant social classes. The
vehicle does not make circulation faster (on Calea
Victoriei the
vehicle is exceeded by the foot passenger), but it
serves for showing off (through brand, year of
fabrication, etc.) the social position of the owner.
The archive
demonstrates that during the inter-war period there
existed a specialization of the
transportation forms according to seasons.
Public Buildings
The Series of
the Private Houses
In Nicolae
Ionescu’s collection, there is a series dedicated to
private houses. Their individualization is made by using
the name of the owner (the house of the noble Eliad,
Anton Pann’s house, I.C. Brătianu’s house), the name of
the person living there (famous: the house on Alexandru
Alley where Iorga lived), the name of the architect (Ion
Mincu, Petre Antonescu, I.D. Berindei, Ştefan Burcuş,
Grigore Cerkez, Victor Ştefănescu), the special placing
by specifying the name of the street or of the near-by
church (for the houses found at the periphery).
Anonymous houses retain the eye through the old style
(usually, the house is about to be demolished, and the
photographer knows this), or through the architectonic
elements: porch, façade.
Careful not to
trouble private spaces, he only enters the houses when
these are on the verge of becoming museums (the
Stork House, the Lahovary House), or if these are
official buildings: the old Conservatory, the Athenaeum,
the Elizabeth Palace.
Elements from both
series can, themselves, give birth to sub-series (the
photographic collection works through "emboitements",
following the principle of the Russian dolls).
Within the
synchronic series, a particular element can create its
own series through the variation of the frames or
starting from a metonymy rapport of the part-whole type
(the edifice and the component elements), or of the
cause-effect type (the initial condition of the
buildings and the result of the demolition operations;
the miraculous wheel before the starting of the
mechanism and after its stopping).
There are series
which function following simultaneously the principle of
accumulation and the principle of transformation. The
Moşilor Series, for example, contains the inventory of
the mechanisms (the tiribombs, the wheel-horses, the
closets, the wheel of fortune, the
montagne-rousse) and their evolution. In the first
photos (dating 1922), the mechanisms existed in a
simplified form; in time, they become more and more
sophisticated, a fact that triggers renaming. The
Moşilor Thematic Series elongates the series of the
circus: the arrival, presentation of the troop,
acrobatics and oriental shows, the torture of the
inquisition and the wonder woman, the moments that
precede the show (the grinning of the clowns, the
preparation of the animals).
It is important to
identify the series to which a certain image belongs,
for that image to become legible starting not only from
its own composition, but also according to the
relationship it establishes with the corpus to which it
belongs.
Ionescu’s serial
type of thinking proves extremely useful because it
allows the precision measurement of changes: rhythm,
affected spaces, mobile elements, elements that put out
resistance, the effects on people. In order to establish
the rhythm of changes within a series, it is sufficient
to follow, through the texts that accompany the images,
the corresponding years for each phase of construction.
The changes are dated and located; therefore
quantification can be realized as much in space, as well
as in time.
The rhythm of
changes is very fast, the inter-war Bucharest proving to
be an extremely mobile world. Within two decades, a new
city rises. The old and the new, however, coexist in the
urban landscape, because the rebuilding of the city is
realized within a certain tradition. Each new building
is inserted within an already built space, the city thus
putting face-to-face, through architecture, different
periods of time. There exist permanent zones of
transition, which bring up-to-date the opposition
couples. The sense is built through this permanent
movement of the difference. The modern (the new), makes
sense only in opposition with the second term
represented through the edgings (the old).
The inter-war
Bucharest is constituted and functions following the
binary system of values whereby one of them overpowers
the other one. Ionescu, however, is satisfied with their
pure description.
Within the first
model, the terms of the opposition couple are integrated
in a hierarchy in which one is the norm and the other is
the sanctioned difference. The engine of the
transformations of the inter-war Bucharest is an
official speech of illuminist type that promotes the
new, justifying it by progress.
The Myth of
Progress generates the excess of innovations: the
first electric tram, the first buses, the first
automatic pump of gas, the
first electric traffic light, the first refuge of
the Bucharest Society (Company) for Transportation, the
first automatic sweeper, the first special packing-cases
for fruits. The town itself becomes the space for
exposition of inventions; in front of the Military
Circle, a telescope is placed.
Being about an
official ideology, the discourse affects the entire
society. This is how its presence at the periphery is
explained, in the Moşilor Fair (the fair is not,
however, randomly chosen; the official discourse usually
appropriates itself the symbolic spaces; and the Fair,
although at the periphery, is still a symbolic place).
In just a few years, Moşii lose the improvisation
appearance. The ideology of progress generates the
passing from play (prater) to function (fair). In 1935,
Romania’s blazon and the inscription “ Sustain the
National Production”, displace the older marking “Luna
Park”—on the Moşilor Portal (ironically, besides the
grandiose portal, still stands a donut-shop). The boards
at the fair announce progress: “No household without a
gas cooker”. And the new is getting old with a dizzily
speed: “We change any out-of-fashion apparatus with a
new one”.
Ionescu’s photos
intercept the way in which one of
the opposition terms, the new, is implemented within
the norm, sanctioning.
Ionescu’s discourse
functions within a paradigm where the point of view is
wished to remain neutral. It does not express a
preference for either the old or the new. According the
same attention to all the objects of this world, Ionescu
does not place different values. He does not establish
hierarchies, does not promote norms according to which
deviations are measured; he simply registers the
variations of the system (the apparition of new objects
and types of behavior, the resistance or allowance to
change). Ionescu’s view does not sanction, but
registers. While the world that he intercepts lives in
the modern as in progress, the photographer lives in
this world (with all of its discourses) within the
Baudelairian way, extracting from the present only that
which seems dignified to be retained, dignified to be
transformed into antiquity. His photos would thus
entirely justify the force of the traces in the sense of
a vestige.
While the new is
submitted to the mobility paradigm, the old is
represented through the static elements of this world,
the elements which put out resistance to changing.
Ionescu’s photos
intercept the spaces of the traditional commerce: the
fair, the market, the rummage sale, the flea market12,
thus realizing the inventory of these worlds: birches,
spoons, knitting, lemonade, ginger bread, popcorn,
pottery, salep (a Romanian drink), penny trumpets,
hangers, wood toys, braga (another specific
Romanian drink), flowers, gas, cakes,
haberdashery. The quantities are tremendous; therefore
the space sometimes becomes scanty, triggering a
brimming over. The
excess in the markets indicates an ostentatious
production rather than consumption beyond normal
proportions. The signs of the circulation of merchandise
are numerous, the photos thus registering
a real culture of commerce.
Within the Moşilor
Fair space, but only within the limits of the play, the
old and the new do not comport as terms of an
opposition, but peacefully coexist. The adoption of a
new mechanism does not automatically lead to the
destruction of the old mechanism. In a picture dating
1925, taken within the
Moşilor Fair, the chains existed in their complex
form, but also in their initial form (scrubbed
mechanisms, reduced to the essential elements).
Ionescu’s photos
catch the symbolic space and phases of time in the city:
winter holidays,
March festival, the
Procession with the Relics. All these are collective
experiences, assuring the unification of the community.
Ionescu is not interested in the ritual moments within
the life of an individual.
The changes within
the symbolic zone are caught through temporal series.
However, the symbolic spaces are characterized through
stability, therefore it is more likely to find them
amongst the cumulative synchronic series.
The logic of the
series unveils the way in which symbolic spaces
function. Therefore, the Moşilor series highlights the
bivalent character of this space that is integrated in
the symbolic paradigm (under the sign of the play as
well as in the paradigm of the economical values (being
a functional space). The photographs demonstrate how the
space becomes more and more complex, being absolutely
normal that the changes that appear on the market, in
the forms of commerce, to be manifested here as well.
But the logic of progress debases because it affects the
symbolic zone, represented through the playful elements
(mechanisms, forms of circus).
A diachronic series
is dedicated to the
Patriarchy, the images catching the process of
modernization through which a holy place passes. The
completion, in the case of the Patriarchy, is marked
through an “opening” (attended by official people,
media).
Although he is not
interested in the privacy of the people, Ionescu is
interested in the privacy of the city whose public space
will be shown to integrate the values of the private,
values pertaining to the symbolic space of maximum
stability for the individual.
The big city
implies the specific delimitation between the public,
characterized through indifference, opening and
impersonality and the private, which stands for
protection. Proximity functions in the public space,
through the look (which implies distance), as well as in
the private space, through the word (which implies
adjacency).
The photographical
archive catches the building of a new city, the
densification, diversification and rationalization of
the spaces. Although within a norm, the city does not
become impersonal and full of anxiety. People do not
feel like strangers in public, do not experiment the
forms of scrappiness—disorganization, because the
relationships amongst individuals are not superficial or
of an expedience manner. Within the urban space, the
proximity of the private type still functions,
regulating relations through talking: the crowds that
gather around and walk together and discuss, the
organ-grinders who discuss; at the market, the stock
exchange, the fairs where people meet and talk.
The public space is
accessible to women, but they always appear accompanied
or in groups. The public space as a space for political
debates is reserved only to men. The crowd at the stock
exchange is male-formed.
The city is not
alienating because the public space functions as a
semi-private space. The goat is milked in front of the
client’s house. Sleeping near-by the market, the pretzel
sellers are the urban homeless people who create private
spaces within the public zone. Finally, private gestures
come off in public: the market, the fair, the street are
spaces for alimentary consumption, certain products
being designated for
public consumption only.
The great
boulevards, the fair, the market are socializing spaces,
generating contact. Paradoxically, the
stock
exchange is also such a place.
While the public
spaces are presented in the photographs of Ionescu as
semi-private places, the domestic space looks like being
contaminated with the values of the public space. The
interiors that Ionescu’s eye ingresses are already
museums: The Stork House, The Lahovary House. The
domestic space is interpreted as place of production for
public economy (the
workshop of Old Anghel Stelaru).
The photographical
archive underlines the fact that the dichotomy
center-periphery structures the distribution in space of
the social groups, as well as the transgression of the
frontiers by certain members of these groups. The
photographs taken at the periphery of the city become a
true social report.
Within the Rroma
ethnic group, there is a trade specialization
(popcorn/lemonade/roasted chestnuts/pretzels salesmen,
fiddlers, florists,
whitewashers, beggars) that superposes a class-
consciousness. Ionescu’s photos allow a quantification
of their presence within certain areas of the urban
landscape. While the downtown is a forbidden area
(except for the florists that one can find even on
Brătianu Avenue, showing an obvious class consciousness
within their ethnic group), they are more numerous in
the outskirts.
The groups of men
and women showing up in the luxury zone of the city are
not involved in the production activities. One can meet
them while walking on the great boulevards, within
festivities, participating at openings. They are also
present in the modern places which function as spaces
for relaxation (pool, hippodrome).
As Ionescu’s texts
do not contain descriptions, the reconstruction of the
dressing code within the inter-war period can be
realized only through analyzing the images. And that
shows a homology between the urban spaces, the social
classes and the dressing codes. Sometimes, the dressing
significant suggests functionality, thus defining a type
of business (the professional costume): the costume of
the traffic agent, the costumes of the people from
Oltenia, the apron of the salespeople, the uniform of
the military men, the costume of the priests, the
costumes of the “căluşari”, the specific
costumes of the actors within circus shows, the hat of
the military people worn during parades (even if the
parade takes place within the Moşilor Fair).
In the case of the
crowds walking on boulevards, the recurrent elements of
the costumes make individualization impossible: men wear
hats (more for the functional role, than for protection:
these are used for saluting) and a coat (the presence of
this accessory is explained through the fact that most
of the pictures taken on the street were realized during
spring, autumn or winter; therefore, not only space but
also moments of time can define the dressing codes). The
women wear hats and mantles with fur neckbands.
There exist
dressing elements that suggest sportsmanship and youth:
the girls’ swimming costumes, at the
Lido Pool.
Ionescu does not
photograph personalities. Actually, he does not seek
individuality, but only the generic type, the
representative type, such as the
“Man
selling funnels”, accompanied by the indispensable
props: the defining object.
The eye of the
photographer also catches the representatives of the
commerce with homemade objects.
Ionescu is not
interested in intimacies, in people’s feelings, but in
the social features in interaction. His subjects are
walking, being grasped during the performance of
different actions and most frequently they are talking:
in the street, at the market, at the fair, in the
slums….
From the series of
the strolling musician, here comes the
organ grinder:
In certain cases,
the bagman practices a sort of “petit métier”, retaining
in the zone of the useful, pleasant, the values of the
small, yet contrasting with the
solemn space in which the business is practiced.
The changes in
urbanism are registered in the series of the boulevards.
The photographs representing
Calea Victoriei compile one of the most important
series in Ionescu’s collection13.
The series is built in diachronic manner, but also
through the variation of the segments of the boulevard
or through different framings. The panoramic views
alternate with the frontal views at the level of the
street and with the interception of details (Samson the
midget). During winter, the crowds disappear from Calea
Victoriei. They appear again during the warm season,
swarming at noon.
The sinuous route
of the old boulevards meets the surroundings of
Dîmboviţa, the river that had placed rhythm in the life
of the Bucharest ever since its building in the XV
century. The series dedicated to
Dîmboviţa intercepts the route of the river,
registered segment after segment, just like the one of
the great boulevards. The buildings that were raised
near-by and the existence of bridges offer a sense of
individuality to each segment. Against all expectations,
the river is not a space for circulation, for mobility,
as the street is. No boats can be seen. But when they do
appear, they more often represent exceptions, like the
effort of two brothers trying to reach the seaside from
Bucharest. The series of the river interferes with the
series of excess, the photos intercepting the way in
which the water can become menacing (during winter—the
snowdrifts; during summer—the flooding and sometimes the
excess of lack of water—the drought—fact that calls
forth the placing into function of special
installations).
For the elaboration
of this material, a certain part of Nicolae Ionescu’s
collection was used, that part in which he registered
the past of a city, transforming it into a collection of
signs, through representation. The archive will not
unveil the inter-war Bucharest, but a representation of
the city that became possible through a sight. The
memory of the photographer is the only one that might
unveil the sense of this sight. But his memory is
inaccessible, the way in which he possessed the world
remaining a part of his privacy.
Where the origin of
the discourse gets lost, interpretation remains. Thus,
the hierarchy is inversed. The photographer is the only
one who knows, but he does not build the sense. The
interpretation is the one that builds the sense. The
story tames the time which is inhumane and foreign to
the photograph (and the photographer), by putting into
scene the irreparable loss of the past, and altogether
protecting, through the creation of a possible sense,
the exact loss of this past.
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NOTES
1. The traditional chronicle annihilates the
hypothesis of the double printing through the nature of
the support. The photochemical printing depends on the
intentions of the photographer in the living of the
present. Which he registers for his own personal sight
(private images which he shares to the others only
during moments of high intimacy), or for the sight of
another (photographs meant for public collections). In
the first case he is a nostalgic, in the second case—an
annalist. Back
2. The present theoretical tendencies affirm the
status of a simple representation of photography.
Barthes thinking is concentrating the changing of a
paradigm through the passing from a photograph as
“message without a code” (discourse which emphasizes the
indexical character of the photographic environment) to
a photograph as an invested discourse with the
attributes of the real through the incapacity of the
receptor to operating on the separation of the image
from the referent. Thus, the sensation of reality
transmitted by a photograph would be explained through
the affective experience of the receiver who desires to
be real (and which proves to be only a psychological
investment). The force of the photography comes from the
unreal meeting with the real. Back
3. The phrase “sign of existence” (Schaeffer), by
marking the indicial side of the photography, more
likely certificates the manifestation of the event, than
the meeting with the sight of a witness. Thus it seems
to be more justified the use of the respective for the
characterization of the traditional chronic.
Back
4. Our lack of faith in the discourse of the
annalist explains the ascendancy of photography over the
traditional chronic: the imprinted discourse on a
material support seems to be more objective than the one
produces by a human instance. Back
5. Being formed as a pressman, Nicolae Ionescu’s
(1903-1975) greatest passion was photography, to which
he dedicated his time (beginning in 1927, during each
summer he toured the country, taking photos,
methodically, of the most representative aspects) and
his financial resources (as technical director within
the “Adevărul” Newspaper, Nicolae Ionescu benefited from
an actually raised paycheck which he invested almost
entirely in films and photographical paper). (Cf.
Nicolae Ionescu—“Bucharest of yore, The Old Bucharest,
Bucarest d’antan”, Alcor, Edimpex SRL, Bucharest 2002,
Preface by Emanuel Bădescu and Iulian Voicu).
Back
6. At that moment, no one could have thought about
the existence of a museum of photography as an object of
art. This has come into the space of the traditional
museum of art only in the 60’s—70’s, moment at which it
was defined as an independent environment forcing upon
it the status of a double of reality, it had blocked its
way into a space in which objects were defined through
originality, uniqueness, authenticity—because, in spite
of the appearances the traditional museum is a rather
recent creation, part of the discourse of the modern).
Connections with the space of the museum have existed,
but they had a totally different style. As a technical
environment, photography has helped to the reproduction
of art pieces, participating through this to the
transformation of the actual museum into a heterogeneous
environment—a collection of independent objects—within a
virtual and homogenous environment (Malraux’s “imaginary
museum”)There exists another hint to the fact that
Ionescu had thought of a traditional museum for art: the
photographs were not thought to be independent objects,
but, as we shall see, they make sense only through the
logical integration among a series.
Back
7. This fact is explained through the experience as
an assistant operator within the Lumières factory in
Lyon. During his short stay in Paris, Ionescu met Nathan
Pathé. Back
8. He avoids the integration into photography of
elements that regard the private life. This aspect only
appears in two photos in which appears his wife
Constanţa Ionescu. We are tempted to integrate this
evidence within the personal archive, but such an
intercession would not be justified. That is because it
is not the presence of his wife that interests him, but
the group of young, beautiful women that appear at the
hippodrome or at a church. The wife accidentally appears
in the picture. Back
9. Apart from Brassaï, Ionescu does not enter
illicit spaces. Only one photo, taken in 1927,
intercepts the interior of a bar in the district Crucea
de Piatră. Back
10. Not only the sight is neutral, but also the
“voice” that sustains it. Meaning the text that
accompanies the photo. The voice is neutral, merely
registering the facts, bearing no comments.
The photos from the Academy bear on the back a certain
text (Ionescu took notes as he processed the films). The
writing is easily recognizable; therefore it is easy to
track down the interpolations, even without a graph
logical analysis. A photography dating from 1910,
representing the horse tram contains, on the back, a
text that describes the route of this transportation
form. The writing is foreign, but the interpolator
discloses his identity by confessing he is the founder
of the photo. Ionescu has always kept his anonymity, in
his images, as well as in his texts. In the archive
there can be met photos in duplicate, containing
different texts.
The main function of the text is to locate in space
order and to date in temporal order. The photo registers
a moment (a state of the world), the text situates it
within a small narrative series, a phase of time. The
result: the temporality of Ionescu’s world dilates. The
scenario follows the logic: initial state of affairs,
disturbing event, protest or acceptance and the final
state. Sometimes, the final state coincides with the
opening moment—the case of the works for modernization
at the Patriarchy. The one narrating the action (the
“voice” of Genette) knows more than the one who sees it.
The voice knows more than the sight, for the mere fact
that the order of the dates is posterior. Reported to
the image, the text represents an assistance discourse.
The text may also bear auxiliary functions: it situates
in space through reporting to a topographic point, it
marks the change of the functionality (the Royal Palace
becomes an Art Museum), or the changing of denomination
(which has impact on streets, markets, in general on
public spaces). Back
11. At least one documentary on Bucharest, which
bears the mention “unknown author” and found in
possession of the National Archive of Films, bears the
unmistakable mark of Nicolae Ionescu.
Back
12. The predecessors of the second-hand shops in
Bucharest, the centers “Father Lazar” (for clothes,
shoes, glass, dishes) and the “Antiquity Covered Market”
(occasion furniture) will be demolished in 1932.
Back
13. The history of the boulevard is the history of
the city. Becoming owner of the estate “Mogoşoaia”,
estate placed near Bucharest, the Prince Constantin
Brâncoveanul ordered in 1692 the opening of a new and
modern road. The intention was to link the prince’s
court in Bucharest to the Mogoşoaia Palace. The road was
named The Mogoşoaia Bridge, becoming, through the
passing of time, the most well known artery of the City.
In October 1878, Romania had won its independence and
the bridge was renamed Victory Avenue.
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