Otto Piene (German, 1928-2014), Black Yang, 1985. Oil, Traces Of Fire And Smoke On Canvas, 80 X 100 Cm.

Bianca Blakeney by Sam Crawford for CAP 74024 Magazine April 2022

“A little darkness, in itself, at the time, is nothing. You think no more about it and you go on. But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.”

—

Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Nell Dorr, 1939

https://www.instagram.com/likalinea/

Pierre Boucher, Femme-fleur, inversion négatif-positif, solarisation et photogramme, 1937

NOMAD. Collection and Art direction by @nicolabortoletto - Pictures by @evelin_peach - Model @thomasdaruos https://www.instagram.com/p/CHmsCiIMfbb/?igshid=1etaswwv9kw89

In your two arms rocking I am  quietly In my two arms rocking you are  quietly In your two arms I am a child,  listening. In my two arms you’re the child, I’m  listening With your arms you hold me tight when  I am scared With my arms I hold you tight and  I’m not scared In your arms even the silence  of death won’t  frighten me. In your arms I’ll fall through death  as though falling through a dream.

Sapovnela (Otar Iosseliani, 1959)

EVA FERRI: You insist on the centrality of the writing, you called it a chain that pulls up water from the bottom of a well. What are the features of your approach to writing?

ELENA FERRANTE: I work well when I can start from a flat, dry tone, that of a strong, lucid, educated woman, like the middle-class women who are our contemporaries. At the beginning I need curtness, terse, clear formulas that are free of affectations and demonstrations of beautiful form. Only when the story begins to emerge with assurance, thanks to that initial tone, do I begin to wait with trepidation for the moment when I will be able to replace the series of well oiled, noiseless links with a rusty, rasping series of links and a pace that is disjointed, agitated, increasing the risk of absolute collapse. The moment I change register for the first time is both exciting and anguished. I very much enjoy breaking through my character’s armor of good education and good manners, upsetting the image she has of herself, undermining her determination, and revealing another, rougher soul; I make her raucous, perhaps crude. I work hard to make the fracture between the two tonalities surprising and also to make the re-entry into the tranquil narration happen naturally. While the fracture comes easily—I wait for that moment, and slip inside it with satisfaction—I very much fear the moment when the narrative has to compose itself again. I’m afraid that the narrating “I” won’t be able to calm down. But above all, now the readers know her calm is false, that is won’t last, that the narrative orderliness will break up again.

— Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia, 2016 

Andrey Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer (Andrey A. Tarkovsky, 2019)