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Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids

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"Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and wanted to stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots. The melancholy of seeing things for the last time is the highly mysterious and poetic essence that these images leave with us. It is as though Andrei wanted to transmit his own enjoyment quickly to others. And they feel like a fond farewell."Tonino Guerra, from the Introduction



This beautifully produced book comprises sixty Polaroid photographs of Andrei Tarkovsky's friends and family, taken between 1979 and 1984 in his native Russia and in Italy, where he spent time in political exile.The size of the Polaroids is exactly as presented in the book, including the frame. The book may therefore be viewed as a facsimile edition. 60 color illustrations.

135 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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About the author

Andrei Tarkovsky

31 books851 followers
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский) was a Soviet film director, writer and opera director. Tarkovksy is listed among the 100 most critically acclaimed filmmakers. He attained critical acclaim for directing such films as Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker.

Tarkovsky also worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, film theorist, and theater director. He directed most of his films in the Soviet Union, with the exception of his last two films which were produced in Italy and Sweden. His films are characterized by Christian spirituality and metaphysical themes, extremely long takes, lack of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and memorable images of exceptional beauty.

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213 (29%)
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94 (13%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
Profile Image for Lila.
24 reviews5 followers
April 2, 2008
Stunning photographs (polaroids!) from one of our century's most perceptive eyes. The photos, taken by Andrei Tarkovsky in the Russian countryside and in Italy while shooting Nostalgia (just prior to his permanent exile to that country), are themselves exquisite. He's conveyed the essence of the dacha in a way I myself have persistently strived to do, despite my consistent failings. The impression is very misty, very much outside of time: the sense of 'exile' is perhaps just as resounding in his Russia stills as in the Italian section of the collection. The polaroids are paired with excerpts from his diary: thoughts on aesthetic theory, on icons, the spirit, and more concrete longings for his family. Pared down to polaroids and notebook jottings, Tarkovsky is still sublime, but probably more accessible than elsewhere.

Not quite a 'coffeetable book,' but surely not text-heavy enough to be a 'real book,' Instant Light falls somewhere in between, in the realm of spiritual musings and pure aesthetics.
Profile Image for Tirdad.
101 reviews47 followers
October 29, 2020
بار دومی که خوندم بیش از بار اول خوشم اومد.
Profile Image for Ameneh.
38 reviews14 followers
April 2, 2021
منظور من از زمان دلیل و انگیزه ای ست که انسان را به تجسم وا می دارد.

معنای زمان با تاریخ و تکامل متفاوت است.تاریخ و تکامل نتیجه هستند و زمان، یک وضعیت و حالت است.آتشی که سمندر روح بشری در آن لانه کرده است.



پ.ن: تارکوفسکی جان

ایستادن زمان را لا به لای عکس هایت و نور را، مابین دلتنگی هایت احساس کردم.
Profile Image for Steven Godin.
2,782 reviews3,373 followers
May 30, 2022
Like another reviewer pointed out the book design isn't great, but the photos themselves I found to be beautifully profound and, due to the hazy warmth of their toned-down natural colours - this being polaroid, had the feeling of distant memories. Some where definitely giving me vibes from two of his films - Nostalgia & Stalker; especially those with mist and fog.
Profile Image for Philippe.
748 reviews722 followers
January 1, 2019
Recently I spent an afternoon with three books: A Feeling of History, a conversation between Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and historian Mari Lending; Instant Light, a photo book that collects the polaroids of the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky, and Huishoudkunde (‘Domestic Science’), a poetry collection by Flemish author Max Temmerman. Delightful how these books, completely unexpectedly, resonated with each other.

The Zumthor book deals primarily with two Norwegian projects conceived around an explicitly historical datum: the Allmanajuvet Zinc Mine Museum and the Steilneset Memorial (in memory of those perished as a result of 17th century witchcraft trials). There are also more peripheral reflections on the never-executed design for the Berlin-based Topographie des Terrors, the Kolumba Museum in Cologne and on the projected Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). With his buildings and installations, Zumthor wants to spur visitors’ capacity for ‘emotional learning’, to bring back feelings of a lost time, to entice them to not just look at a place but into it. “I believe it is more about creating a feeling for things that are absent than about creating a feeling of presence for things lost.”

Cut to the Temmerman’s poetry collection that revolves around mysterious and mundane images of domesticity and how they connect us back to historical presences. One of the poems - Constellations of proximity - runs as follows (in my own translation):

The surface of happiness seems
a darkened room full of glowing lamplets.
The dumb devices
consolidate constellations of presence.
The remote controls, laptops and printers,
the washing machines and televisions
form galaxies of protection,
an electronic labyrinth that soothes.
A past glimmers in proximity.
Someone was here before.
I can read his traces.


Back to Zumthor who describes one of the buildings that are part of the Allmanajuvet project as a more traditional museum: “The gallery shows objects found in the mine, such as buckets, cubes of dynamite, and mining tools. The display is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century museum with small glass showcases - a kind of history museum in situ. The objects are illuminated by the daylight that trickles into the black boxes through narrow shafts from above. It is the light that once fell on this modest mining equipment.”

description

So lovely to find architect and poet to stumble into one another, searching for the reassuring traces of departed others, in a room in which the darkness is punctuated by tiny islands of illuminated peace.

Onwards to Tarkovsky, who later in life was a great amateur of the Polaroid instant camera. The pictures are gorgeous, evanescent, chimerical, saturated with pronounced greenish, blueish and yellowish casts.

description

Also Tarkovsky sees himself as a successor, as someone who belongs to and sustains a particular tradition. The act of remembrance then becomes an essential part of the creative act. It ties a potentially painful past to the fundamental affirmation that is embedded in an artistic image. For Tarkovsky, “remembering is a choice of love and mercy, a gamble of faith and hope that liberates the heart from the pain of events that are now over, dead and finished, towards the openness of a new and different way of life that is still connected to the present.”

I am leaning back into Temmerman’s universe with his poem ‘The nobility of generations’:

Our garden hosts the trees of yore.
In my bedroom slept the fathers
of my father. Phrases that I never
would utter, roll with foolish aplomb
over my lips as if from the mouth
of a ventriloquist. When high summer
and the hours linger, then this question
rises straight into heaven: whose lives are we living?
In winter there is no time for these concerns.
During the days of cold confined we think
hopefully like a patient about what has been
prescribed to us. Nothing is ever finished
and so we move on, with the
resignation of a typesetter. From generation to generation
to generation: we pass on knowledge, and on.


Tarkovsky: “The true artist always serves immortality, striving to immortalize the world and man within the world.”

Zumthor: “Essential to the notion of emotional reconstruction, as I use the term, is that it has the quality of a shared experience. I can compose a piece of architecture with materials, light, shadow and sound, and give it a presence most people would be able to associate with something in their personal landscape of emotions. We are all come from somewhere, we are all full of highly personal images that are dear to us; we are all full of history.”

And so we find three artists working in different media - the still and moving image, the written word, space materialised - to establish bridges between the past and the present and the future, between the idiosyncratic and the universal, between protection and exposure, fate and contingency.

I’m giving the final word to Max:

Futurism

There’s poetry involved, rectilinear
and inflexible as a schema.
But there is also a small sorrow, almost invisible.
Barely larger than the word.
And we keep on careening. Nothing will be
as it never was.
It starts now. And now. And now.
Everyone is a remembrance.
And every remembrance
is a landscape within a landscape.


Note: I posted an identical review for each of the three books mentioned. Some specific comments about the Tarkovsky book. A lovely concept with a short introduction by screenwriter Tonino Guerra, a generous selection of polaroids, supplemented with notes from Tarkovsky's diaries and other publications, and a compact, thoughtful concluding essay by Giovanni Chiaramonte (who co-edited the pictures together with Tarkovsky). The images are nicely printed, one polaroid per page. A layer of spot varnish lifts the images nicely from the page. However, the paper quality is rather poor. The paperback version was published in 2006 but already page edges are yellowing, and so are some of the blank, unprinted areas on the backside of pages with images.
Profile Image for Seamus Thompson.
179 reviews55 followers
June 29, 2013
A beautiful collection of Polaroid photographs (portraits and landscapes) taken in Russia and Italy in the late 1970s, early 1980s by the great Russian filmmaker. Many images suggest Tarkovsky's films -- especially Mirror and Nostalghia. All of them are beautiful in their own right. The quotations selected from Tarkovsky's artistic credo, Sculpting in Time, and his diaries (Time Within Time) work perfectly here to complement the Polaroids. The Introduction by Tonino Guerra, poet and Tarkovsky's friend and collaborator, is touching and insightful..
Profile Image for l.
1,707 reviews
February 8, 2016
"An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. it is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential of the affirmation of life. Whatever it expresses – even destruction and ruin – the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith. Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic. And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity."

"We are crucified on one plane, while the world is many-dimensional. We are aware of that and are tormented by our inability to know the truth. But there is no need to know it. We need to know love and to believe. Faith is knowledge with the help of love."
Profile Image for Tintarella.
302 reviews7 followers
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February 12, 2025
تارکوفسکی کارگردانی گزیده‌کار (مثل درایر و برسون) بود و در تمام بیست و پنج سال کارش یک فیلم نیمه بلند (غلتک و ویلون، که شخصاً خیلی دوستش دارم) و هفت فیلم بلند (کودکی ایوان، آندری روبلف، سولاریس، آینه، استاکر، نوستالژی و ایثار) ساخت. جالبی سبکِ تارکوفسکی در اینه که برخلاف سنت قدرتمندِ مکتب مونتاژ شوروی -که با گذشت این‌همه سال هنوز هم یکی درخشان‌ترین دوره‌های تاریخ سینمای اروپاست، در کنار امپرسیونیسم فرانسوی، اکسپرسیونیسم آلمانی و بعدها نئورئالیسم ایتالیائی- از سینمای به اصطلاح دکوپاژی فراتر می‌ره و به سینمای میزانسنی نزدیک‌تر (تصویر معنی خاصی نیست که توسط کارگردان بیان شود، انگار جهانی‌ست که در یک قطره آب انعکاس یافته)؛ از نمای کوتاه به بلند. (نمی‌تونم به این ایده‌ی بامزه‌ی تفاوت فکر نکنم که آیزنشتاین شیفته‌ی کابوکی بود، ژاپنی می‌دونست و چندتا هایکو گفته بود ولی تارکوفسکی عربی خونده بود). البته که نمی‌شه تاثیر ایده‌ی بازنی-نئورئالیستی رو که بر کل سینمای دنیا پس از جنگ دوم سایه انداخته نادیده گرفت، ولی جذابیت حرکت این نسلِ سینماگران روس-شوروی، استفاده‌ی بسیار رادیکال از نمای بلنده. مثلاً توی این دوران کالاتزوف رو داریم و اون نمای بدون برش و عجیبِ «من کوبا هستم» و البته خود تارکوفسکی که رفته رفته نماهاش طولانی‌تر می‌شن که در ایثار به منتها... این حرکت ��عدها با کارگردانی چون سوکوروف (با ذکر تاثیر زیادش روی شهرام مُکریِ خودمون) به اوج خودش می‌رسه؛ کشتی نوح روسی (البته سوکوروف نشون داده که از تغییر ایده‌های بصری و روائی‌ش هراسی نداره و نشونه‌ش شاهکارِ فاوسته). در نهایت دلم می‌خواد از آلکسی ژرمن و اثرِ دیوانه‌وارش، خدا بودن سخت است، هم اسم ببرم، از رمانی به همین نام... عجیبه که هنرمندها چه‌طور می‌تونن کار هم رو تکمیل کنند. خدا بودن سخت است هم با نمای بلند کار داره ولی شیوه‌ای که باهاش مواجه می‌شه از قبلی‌ها بسیار متفاوت‌تره.
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چیزی که در کنار تماشای این پولاروئیدها زیاد به چشم می‌خوره، رویکرد دینی تارکوفسکی به جهان و البته فمیلی گای بودنِ بی‌اندازه‌شه. این‌که بالاخره قبل از مرگش تونسته پسرش رو ببینه تسلی‌بخشی بی‌نهایتی داره.
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می‌خواهم دِیرِ راهبان را بدون درخت بلوط بلندش تجسم کنم
چه بی‌معنی، بی‌حاصل و فلاکت‌بار
خواهد بود
Profile Image for Karo.
126 reviews38 followers
May 27, 2011
Historia envuelta en polaroid. Bordada con luz. Empaquetada en Amor.
Profile Image for Stefan Dimov.
47 reviews21 followers
April 29, 2024
"An artistic image is one that ensures its own development, its historical viability. An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. It is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential for the affirmation of life."
Profile Image for Rebeccasmile.
9 reviews1 follower
April 8, 2013
1)影像並不是導演所表達的特定意旨。 而是宛如一滴水珠,所映射出的整個世界
2)那麼高,即使鳥兒掉下羽毛/羽毛也不會飄落//它們不會掉落地面,它們會往上翻飛,最後從我們的世界中永遠消失
3)生命包含死亡。/相形之下,生命的影像卻排除死亡,/否則便是在死亡身上看見一種/肯定生命的獨特潛力。
4)藝術創作在定義上,/是對死亡的否定,/因而是樂觀的。/儘管最終而言,藝術家是悲劇角色
5)信仰是有愛相助的知識

英國報評說,這些照片如維梅爾,我這才又認識了維梅爾。
維梅爾作畫的速度不快,現在能確定是他的作品只有四十幅,都是小件作品。那些畫大都是描繪家庭生活。
至少這件事情上,我覺得確實很有維梅爾的味道
Profile Image for mao.
34 reviews5 followers
October 28, 2007
Tarkovsky took pictures. And this collection demonstrates that he is equally a master of the (moving) still as much as a master of the moving (still) image.
Profile Image for Jamie Dougherty.
182 reviews6 followers
March 7, 2017
I'm gonna have to think about, "We are crucified on one plane, while the world is many-dimensional" some more.
Profile Image for Psychopu.
9 reviews
July 10, 2015
The photographs are beautiful; however, the book design, being quite mediocre, takes something away from the mood of the images.
Profile Image for avery.
40 reviews
May 19, 2019
beautiful atmospheric photographs and words oof
Profile Image for yo JP.
510 reviews10 followers
July 22, 2025
Série polaroidů z Ruska a Itálie z let 1979-1984. Polaroid Tarkovskij objevil koncem sedmdesátých let. Ke snímkům jsou připojeny i jeho "krátké modlitby" (poznámky), reflektující jeho spirituální, filmový i osobní život, ze všeho nejvíc jde cítit Tarkovského citlivá povaha, loajalita a láska vůči rodině, Bohu. Z polaroidů pak definitivně dýchají momenty, které vás přimějí se zarazit, touha zachytit je očividná, i to, že je cosi nelehkého pod povrchem, když musí opustit zemi z politických důvodů... to "konzervování času", mám to podobně, když mě něco doopravdy zaujme. Na polaroidu to vše ale samozřejmě vypadá mnohem líp, hlouběji, živěji... podobnou estetiku AT uplatňoval i ve svých filmech a je ihned očividná. Rusko je plné mlhy, stromů, vodní hladiny, her stínů a Slunce, stojících a čekajících postav, Itálie spíše vyníká sluncem ošlehanou architekturou, ale současně, zde byl Andrej ve městě a zároveň se připravoval na natáčení 'Nostalgie'. Úžasný cit pro kompozici a světlo.

"Podle mého názoru, když mluvíme o tom, že Bůh stvořil člověka k obrazu svému, měli bychom chápat, že obraz (podoba) má co do činění s Jeho esencí - a tohle je stvoření. Odsud pochází možnost zhodnotit svoji práci a co představuje. Zjednodušeně, smyslem umění je hledání Boha v člověku." (volně přeloženo)
Profile Image for Del río.
9 reviews
November 7, 2024
“En mi opinión, cuando hablamos sobre Dios haciendo al hombre a su imagen y semejanza, deberíamos comprender que la semejanza tiene que ver con su esencia, y esto es creación. De ahí viene la posibilidad de evaluar una obra y lo que representa. En pocas palabras, el significado del arte es la búsqueda de Dios en el hombre”.

Amé este libro con todo mi ser, siempre he tenido un fanatismo inmenso por la obra de Tarkovsky. Es una mente brillante que aportó a muchos campos del arte, y que todo lo que tocaba lo convertía en ella. Aquí, sus fotografías acompañan pequeños fragmentos en donde habla sobre Dios, la humanidad, el arte y el amor. Me atrevería a decir que esa es la marca tan íntima de Andrei, por la que muchos pueden conectar con él, además de tener una facilidad increíble para retratarte un sentimiento del que no puedes salir. Este hombre fue magnético en todo lo que hizo en vida.

“El verdadero artista siempre sirve a la inmortalidad
esforzándose por inmortalizar el mundo
y al hombre en el mundo”.
Profile Image for Martyn.
380 reviews42 followers
July 18, 2021
I wonder how much attention we would give to these polaroids if we didn't know that a) Tarkovsky is one of the greatest auteur directors in cinema history and b) that he died in sad circumstances for him and his family soon after taking the Italian photos? Not a lot I would imagine as they are pretty ordinary. Sure some are magical and capture a moment or light play that is fascinating to look at and of course the framing in others is creative, but most appear to be nothing more than snapshots. In fact the few black and white shots in the bloated and religiose afterword essay are far more interesting in my opinion.
Profile Image for Ray Dunsmore.
345 reviews
June 17, 2017
A rather interesting book with a selection of gorgeous images all too frequently marred by very poor reproduction (take the odd sharp contrast that overtakes the images on pages 25 and 31, not to mention the fact that these are not actual reproductions of the Polaroids, but simply scans of the images set into a basic, unchanging frame to make them look like actual Polaroids - note that each one has the exact same texture on the borders).

To be honest, I expected more from the man who made Solaris and Stalker, but what I got was pleasant nonetheless.
Profile Image for Mima.
25 reviews
Read
December 7, 2024
način na koji su ove slike složene mi se nije uopšte dopao: dosadna bela pozadina, citati bez konteksta, i čak mi ni pogovor nije odgovarao... ipak, same slike su divne, ti prelepi ruski i italijanski pejzaži, gustina kisele žućkaste svetlosti koja čini da sve izgleda kao bolno i daleko sećanje - ovako pamtim vožnje kroz istočnu srbiju u detinjstvu, u poznu jesen (žuto lišće, drvene i zemljane kuće, načičkana groblja, miris ćumurane i dobrodušni psi lutalice)
Profile Image for Toni.
140 reviews
October 4, 2025
A beautiful wee book featuring a selection of Polaroids, accompanied by some journal entries, of Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (1932-1986).
Anther short life, another brilliant vision.
So many good quotes.
Profile Image for Younes Bagheban.
10 reviews
August 29, 2022
بشدت سبک عکس هاش رو دوست دارم...
و واقعا حس خوبی به آدم میدن...
Profile Image for Sofia.
355 reviews43 followers
June 2, 2023
"This book is kind of training me to see, throughout its duration, ecstatically"

As highly recommended as everything else he did, puzzle-pieces
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews

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