Love Stories reminds us of a famous history of the cinema: what Jean-Luc Godard wanted, ideally, was to make home movies in the guise of a fictional feature film, and to make a feature film that would fulfil the intimate function of a home movie. In other words, he was thinking about how to reflect the author’s life in an artwork that is not a chronicle of his personal life. Godard did so by accidentally appearing on screen, recording his voice behind the scenes, or instructing his actors to play out a scene from his life.
Aija Bley works in a more feminine or incomprehensible way. She says that the topic is love stories, but she photographs lonely portraits in city gardens, mighty trees in an old park, narrow apartments, closed courtyards, white walls, a plastic boat resembling a swan, and only one hugging couple. Where is the love? It is easier to list those things that are not in the artworks. Unlike with Bley’s first personal photo exhibition, Later (2012), her project Portrait Workshop (2013-2014) and her open-air exhibition Walking in Zolitude (2014), Love Stories do not have images that are based on anthropological interests. There is an absence of psychologism, and the “weaknesses” of the artist’s contemporaries are not revealed. This is more of an abstract pulse that brings together all of the images, no matter what story line is seen in each of them.
The rhythmic structure of the compositions changes, but something that is pulsating in the depth of the images does not change. Love Stories has precisely staged “clear” images, as well as “thicker” multilayered images in which an episode, when changing the angle of one’s view, is enshrined endlessly as a passionate set of travel notes. What does love look like? This work changes the accustomed anthropological and psychological approach to this question to an abstract one, looking for the answer in the ability of the artist to justify the presence of art in each scene. Love becomes evident in these stories if we understand that the artist loves art. To paraphrase Godard’s Alpha 60, one can ask what turns an ordinary sink into love. Lemmy Caution’s reply is of use without any changes: It is poetry.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. Hair, roots and wrinkles of textiles weave together. I had drawn a sketch in my notebook before the trip. I caught up to the strange young man with the long hair in the metro station. He kept quiet, and I photographed him from above.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. Trees in the Nagoja Park reminded me of a photo session in the centre of Tokyo the previous day. The Sun emphasised the powerful trunks and roots, and nature was self-sufficient in its mightiness. Light sparkled in a spider’s web for just a moment.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. I could not approach them for several hours. To fill the time, I took pictures of things that surrounded me. I spotted a woman and a man looking at each other as if they were frozen figures of wax. It was important for me to ensure that the photo only showed the eye of the girl and the hand of the man.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. Tokyo. For a second day I am trying to photograph an image that I invented in Riga – a sunny day and a man in a business suit riding in a white boat. I did not manage to rent a white swan. Pink is compromise.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. My plan was to take photographs of a karaoke bar from the street. Each time that I approached it, the windows of the bar were empty. Only shortly before my departure did I see life in the window. I only had a mobile telephone with me.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. I wanted a trophy for myself – an urban landscape with graphically clear vertical and horizontal lines. I photographed in the morning. The light was diffuse. If I concentrate my view, I can spot slippers, laundry and flowers.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. When I took this picture, I thought of the photograph Marcos Lopez from Buenos Aires. I thought about his Pop-Latino. I think that he would like the motif of swans. I’m deviating away from my theme.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. It was a rainy day, and they seemed to be alienated. I went outside and stood by their bedroom window. I took a photo of that which they saw outside their window – a cement wall that blocked the view, a pile of wet leaves and a pipeline.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. After I took a picture of the wet pile of leaves, the cement wall and the pipeline, I spotted a plastic garden house. I focused the lens a bit to the right. Now I could see the wet leaves with a dripping garden container. Oddly enough, the picture with pipeline seemed lonelier.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. I believe that this everyday still life with a sink is Japanese. I got carried away. Of course, before I took the picture, I removed everything that was unnecessary from the scene. I would even say that this is a portrait of a Japanese person – orderly, white, reticent and as closed as a water spigot.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. In Latvia I feel links between people and nature. In Japan, people feel more natural in an interior. In this scene, I merged forms – the round white light bulbs, the scene behind the window, the texture of the blanket, and the hands and bodies of people are not separate objects. Hands are of importance, and significant is the fact that I do not see the faces of people. People flow together with space.
Aija Bley, “Love Stories”. The naïve motif of the curtains seems to accidentally create a symbolic reference of a caged bird. Rooms in Japan are narrow and with low ceilings. In testing the boundaries of the scene, I photographed the full length of a model from the further possible distance. I was fascinated by the proportions of a human body in a low-ceilinged room.
Aija Bley is a Latvian photographer, videoartist and film director. Since 1995, she has produced more than 25 video and animation films, shown in numerous video and film festivals abroad. She studied film directing at the Latvian Academy of Culture, art history at the Latvian Academy of Art and photography at the ISSP photo school.
