Fotograf Magazine

“At the end of January and early February, when everything remains covered in snow in our part of the world, spring has already arrived in Israel and the almond trees are in bloom, and so centuries ago, the rabbis named the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat as a holiday – the New Year of Trees, or the Feast of Fruit. There are several reasons for this. The 15th day of the month of Shvat is when the birthday of trees is celebrated. From that time, the age of newly planted trees is counted, a tradition since time immemorial, established by the following injunction: “when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord.” (Leviticus 19: 23–25).[ref]Mikuláš Vymětal, Tu be šwat – Svátek ovocných sromů [online], 38/1997. Accessible in Czech at: http://www.balustrada.cz/bratrstvo/cislo.phtml?9703_svatek[/ref]

A lacework of branches, covered in blossoms. Fragrance. Springtime in a foreign land. With great enthusiasm, Veronika Daňhelová embarked on photographing the most ordinary things. It would seem that a randomly chosen almond tree presents an ideal object for her camera: it could produce a photo of a tiny tree in bloom, which will be above all a faithful portrayal of the photographed reality, without further complex connotations.

The almond tree in question, however, is photographed in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land, on the 15^th day of the month of Shvat. The photograph of an almond tree in bloom thus cannot simply represent a banal or a beautiful image, for its subject is a time-honored and important Jewish symbol of springtime. It was a matter of chance, with nothing planned. Thus the original resolution to look for simple motifs turned into both a practical and a theoretical adventure, a quest for openness and freedom in terms of artistic endeavor, perhaps a quest for a new artistic style.

Elaborating the symbolic level of the almond-tree photograph, Veronika departs from her criteria, set in advance, of simplicity and a limited narrative quality of the image – a faithful imprint, maintaining strict adherence to her manifesto. From that moment on, she has focused on the image as a symbol. Due to certain material as well as technical limitations she has also freely experimented with the formal aspects of some black-and-white as well as color prints. In contrast to classical enlarged prints, these are assembled from smaller formats. With the black-and-white print of the almond tree, Veronika pasted sheets of photo-paper of smaller format on to the glass plate with scotch tape. She then exposed each sheet separately and developed them. The resulting image displays a slight imprecision in tonality within the different components of the large format image, as in places they do not connect smoothly, and in other places they overlap, thus indicating a more complex semantic structure of the image of an almond tree. Moreover, there are white spots where the scotch tape was placed, and it is as though these imperfections in particular contained the deep local symbolism of the original archetype, thus far hidden from the artist. The case is different with color images. The use of paper on a plastic base and the processor prevented Veronika from using the same procedure. Instead, she embarked on another experiment: by turning the paper during exposure, the corners of smaller format sheets became black, as the light penetrated underneath them from the side. Thus apart from the altered tonality of the corners of small format images, the color pictures also feature a photogram of the base. Thus the photographed symbols (a chair, a broom) feature additional information regarding the place where the original photographic images were developed. The complexity of the formal process of producing the resultant photographic image, thus marked, aptly evokes and enhances its semantic richness and multi-layered nature.

The almond tree was the beginning. The tree and other prints should therefore be presented as the artist’s selection of the particular, of separate symbolic images. One cannot speak of a complex inner structure of the series, the overall selection is defined above all by the subjective criteria of the artist, and by the time and place the images were made. The photographs might therefore be installed as far apart from one another as the exhibition venue allows. Then it might occur to the viewer that the pile of rocks could represent Palestine, and the serene surface of water could perhaps represent Jordan or the Dead Sea. If we are willing to let one’s mind run freely and still attentively contemplate these seemingly ordinary objects and situations together with Veronika, we may allow ourselves to be carried by the cerebral and yet magical possibilities of contemporary photography. With the awareness that the crown of the tree of meanings will branch out, either according to the information we glean directly from the images, or that we succeed in de-coding from other cultural sources. Katarína Uhlířová