Lydia Goldblatt: Still Here

Still Here takes the photographer’s own parents as its subject. Lydia Goldblatt, born in London in 1978, turned her camera on her mother and father as age made them visibly vulnerable, and their willingness to be looked at is met by a gaze that stays tender. Hatje Cantz published the work as a clothbound book in September 2013: ninety-two pages, forty-five photographs, and texts by Christiane Monarchi and Goldblatt herself. The stillness invoked in the publisher’s presentation — time stopped, everything covered, waiting — is not repose but the suspended interval of watching someone change.

The series brings together two orders of image: portraits of the parents, and individual details such as a watch abandoned on a shelf, a closed eyelid, the sunlit form of a bee. In Wedding Ring only the mother’s legs and one hand appear as she stands naked in the bath, the silvery band seeming to weigh on her and to determine the framing; Hinterland places the father at the edge of his physical form. Goldblatt bathes these pictures in soft light and strong shadow, so that an individual life is asked to carry questions about mortality and time.

Love and loss are the book’s matter, but Goldblatt does not argue them; she stays near. At that distance a ring, an eyelid, an insect hold the weight of a person receding from them, without dissolving their physical specificity. The title’s “still” works in two directions — motionless, and continuing — and the photographs occupy the interval between the two senses.

For a collection concerned with family, ageing and loss in contemporary photography, the specific interest is the connection between parental portraits and images that evoke passing time. Texts by Christiane Monarchi and Goldblatt accompany the photographs. The clothbound volume measures 219 by 236 millimetres and was designed by Tappin Gofton. It preserves a personal project in which physical details and metaphor offer complementary ways to approach the experience of watching loved ones grow older.

From Lydia Goldblatt's series "Still here," love speaks. The love of the photographing daughter for her aging parents. The love of the parents who, aware of their own vulnerability, nonetheless trustingly surrender to her tender gaze. "Wedding Ring" shows only the legs and hand of the mother standing naked in the bathtub. The silver band seems to weigh heavily, determining the composition of the image. "Hinterland" is dedicated to the fading father, and the picture explores the boundary between physical existence and metaphysics.Lydia Goldblatt (born 1978 in London) bathes her intimate photographs in soft light and strong shadows, connecting the life of the individual with eternal human questions. She often focuses on a detail: a discarded wristwatch, a closed eyelid, the body of a dead bee. In a moving document of transience, Goldblatt combines portraits of her parents with evocative embodiments of fleeting time.

Designed by: Tappin Gofton
Texts by: Christiane Monarchi, Lydia Goldblatt
English
September 2013, 92 Pages , 45 Photos
clothbound
219mm x 236mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3628-2

Publisher page editorial text:
| Time seems to stand still. Everything is covered in stillness. Waiting.
In the series Still Here by Lydia Goldblatt (*1978 in London), the artist immerses her intimate photographs in sublime extremes of light and shade, tracing the fleeting shadow of personal existence onto enduring human narratives. Marked with tenderness, her work offers a concentrated meditation on mortality, time, love and loss, in which corporeal scrutiny courts metaphysical wonder. The images are often limited to a single detail: a timepiece abandoned on a shelf, a closed eyelid, the sunlit form of a bee.
Wedding Ring features just the legs and hand of the artist’s mother, standing naked in the bathtub. The silvery circlet seems to weigh heavy on her.
In Hinterland, the artist’s father is depicted at the literal edge of his physical form, a means of searching for the space between the physical and metaphysical.
Goldblatt gives witness to the ephemerality of life, combining portraits of her parents with metaphorical images that speak to the shifting nature of time.

Publisher source ↗