time anatomy: Aneta

TIME ANATOMY : ANETA

The physical passage through adolescence is always dramatic. The body and its language transform quickly, grasping for new accents that just come and go. The relationship to the space around evolves and changes with a dizzying speed. This experience is even more intense and confusing when you are a ballet dancer, a gymnast or anyone training to be exceptionally physically articulate.

Time Anatomy series follows three ballerinas going through this unique phase of life. Photographed annually over a period of 5 years, the ballerinas repeat the same postures again and again. While the first images are straightforward portraits of a changing face, the subsequent photographs show poses that are invented by the ballerinas together with the photographer. These poses are tweaked versions taken from the vocabulary of dance. As they grow and change, sometimes the girls have to adapt the pose to the new limitations of the surrounding space. Sometimes there is hardly any difference that can be spotted in the new image, it looks just like an attempt at repetition, like another take of the previous year’s photograph done at the same time.

Comparison is the intuitive mode of looking at these photographs. The negative stripes superimposed on the images (that are following the establishing ones from the first year) are always taken from the negative of the same photograph from the previous year. The stripes seem to be an interruption, a challenge to the intent to compare. However they are in a way offering a more radical form of comparison within the images themselves.

While moving the gaze across the photographs, there doesn’t appear to be any linear structure or evolving pattern. Although photographed within a rigorous time scheme and systematically composed, the changes seem random and unpredictable. The chaos of adolescence indeed goes against any attempt to be structured, organised or tamed.