The Slow, Inevitable Dilapidation

I can't see enough of this series by Slava Pirsky of his daughter Alex.  She is growing up, it seems.  And Slava and his wife, Anna, are documenting it.  Anyone could do it, of course, though not as beautifully or artistically.  But people don't.  There are jobs to tend to and bills to pay.  The house needs painting and the yard tending, and suddenly the years have piled up and rushed by and the children are grown and all that is left to bear witness to the years are a few snapshots from vacations that were taken in places that were not their home.  How many billions of families?  And yet this thing is so rare.

Today when he posted the photograph above, I wrote:

I can't see one of these and not comment, though the comment is often very redundant. I'll take a copy of this book. It is the softness of the Polaroid and the light, the muted colors and the suggestion of a style with which life is lived. It is the appearance of an intensity of emotion within a child. It is the freshness of life unveiled and the slow dilapidation of that freshness as it is replaced by experience. It is the fullness of lips that thin with age and the roundness of eyes that will learn to squint, the amnesia of skin that will learn to remember. Holy smokes, this isn't the half of it. There is an innocence and danger in it all.  

And, of course, there is that cat. I have much to say about that cat. . . but I won't.

 The cat, of course, was a recurrent theme in the paintings of Balthus.  I know that the genders may gaze upon these images with different attention.  I love them.

I told Slava today in an email that I would love to have two of these hanging on my wall, and he promised that when they made prints for their next show, I would have them.  Now the dilemma--choosing.  The truth is, I would love to have them all.

Alex falls, gets bruised and busted, heals, has scars.  That is all there is to life.  But there is something else--completely--to art.

I pray that Slava never runs out of film and never loses his love of this series.  He and his wife have other projects, but this one is too good.  I have forever had a link to his site.  Though he doesn't post nearly enough for me, you should go there often.