Libuše Jarcovjáková – Starting Points and Topic Choices

1957 Prague

I am five years old. I found several “nudie” cards. They have naked ladies on them.
I need to know what they look like from behind but the cards only have these strange patterns on the back. I try finding the other half of the figure, examining the cards again and again. I can’t believe that none of the layers I gradually unpeel contain anything other than grey cardboard.
How to get behind the mirror? Beyond reality and description? What other possibilities of representation and photographic form can I find?

1961 Praha

I am eleven years old. I spend hours in front of the mirror, observing my profile and trying to look like an Inca. I press my nose, pout my lips. My profile is starting to look very Indian, I sincerely believe it will stay that way forever.
How to store, fix the image in the mirror? The phenomenon of the mirror. Can the camera take on the role of the mirror? Poses and posing, playing roles, performances.

1967 Vrchotovy Janovice

I am fifteen. I am a photographer. My first self-portraits begin appearing in negative. I stand in front of the mirror, some outlandish fur hat on my head. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I’ll be, what will become of me, I know only that life is a very serious affair. And I know I need to study it.
Self-reflection, introspection, questioning one’s own identity, self-observation. Finding oneself. Is the self-portrait the best tool to establish a sense of distance?

1985 Berlin

I am thirty-three. I abandoned everything I knew, I left my family, my friends. I’m in a foreign country, I don’t know the language, I don’t understand anything. Once again, I spend hours looking at the mirror. I need to make sure I exist. I take photographs of my arms and legs, of my face. I need clear evidence – I am here, I am alive, I haven’t disappeared.
Can photography / taking photographs / and art-making itself serve a healing function? As a self-therapeutic process? Does it aid in the treatment of traumas? Can it also be therapeutic for a broader audience? Can these findings be generalised? Gaze, the female gaze.

2002 Kho Samui, Thailand

I am fifty. I walk through a darkness so black and unknown that I lose touch with reality. Terrifying noises of the jungle; animals unknown to me must be close. That which surrounds me is the universe. The absolute, the infinite. The “I” dissolved. I try to capture and process the feeling. I record sounds and my own fear.
Is it possible to capture deep, transcendental experiences in a visual form? How to connect images to other media, to video, audio?

2020 Mauroux, Francie

I am sixty-eight. I struggle to move my heavy body, tormented by aches. Following the pandemic lockdowns, when many givens stopped being true, as I search for the meaning of the remainder of my life, I swim in a pool amidst French fields. I feel the wind, I feel that I am alive again. I take a few self-portraits. They are fundamentally unpleasant to me.
“Frogman”, I call myself. I reject the photographs, they repulse me, I do not accept myself. They contain my ruin, finitude, merciless change. I think of Rembrandt’s self-portraits as an old man.
Can the self-portrait serve as a tool of self-acceptance? Can reflection upon the process of ageing be aesthetic? Can such a visual message contain something educational and beneficial for society?

Image captions

1 | Libuše Jarcovjáková, Berlin, 2018
2 | Libuše Jarcovjáková, Prague, 1984
3–5 | Libuše Jarcovjáková, From the series Mobile Life, 2005