see my work at: www.panchotolchinsky.com and My Flickr
In Pancho Tolchinsky’s photographic work, two aesthetic traditions intersect. The effect created by this intersection is chimerical. It can be summed in the words: the work presents the world as one man found it, but this seemingly naïve formulation folds two fundamental questions that hover above his works and touch upon the very origins of the art of photography, as the quest for capturing light and color: what is there in the world that is worth finding? And, what place has this quest in a man’s life? Each of these two questions is a token of one of the two traditions interwoven in Tolchinsky’s work.
On the one hand, these are the works of a traveller, a wanderer in contemporary landscapes, mostly urban, for whom the camera is like a walking stick.
And on the other hand, it is within the modernistic tradition of ready-made art, that these works should be placed, as they celebrate the moment of framing the artefacts and natural things that the wanderer encounters in the course of his excursions, and turn them into objects of beauty or wonder.
In this intersection, Tolchinsky’s work offers a remedy for the wanderer’s intrinsic melancholy, associated with the aimlessness of his conduct, and endows meaning to the objects that are captured and framed in the photographic moment. In this respect, his work can be considered as critical towards the two traditions, but at the same time as their saviour. The quest for something to hold on to, for an object, is embodied in a quest for meaningfulness or significance.
What is found - the part of the world that is found to be worth finding - is opening up the possibility of rest, of bringing wandering to a halt for a brief instant, and this pause is when significance is made possible. In other words: what is being photographed in Tolchinsky’s works is in fact the stabilizing moment in which meaning, significance as such, is captured. The works do not signify the world around which they were taken, but rather, they document a way in which significance can be found in the world.
Nimrod Matan
some of my publications:
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