Supersonico

Book Review

Publisher: Untitled Publishing

Specs: Softcover, 420 x 300 mm

Price: €40

Autobiography — a perspective that you cannot take away from somebody, it’s simply theirs. However, what happens when somebody else interprets our life and vision? One of the standouts among photographers from the second half of the twentieth century is certainly Libuše Jarcovjáková. Her striking work, guided by instinct and gut feeling can be recounted through her raw and poetic aesthetics. Jarcovjáková’s avant-garde subjectivity mirrors her own life while reflecting the circumstances and zeitgeist of the times when she pressed the shutter. Her latest book Supersonico is produced by editor and curator Lucie Černá who worked closely with the artist for many years and went through her 120,000 negatives to build this publication. Based on contradictions, the medium is presented as a lived reality and a mapping of a territory. Mixing black and white analogue images with digital colour photos taken on the artist’s phone becomes an invitation to a visual cabaret.

Supersonico comes in a grandiose A3 format, a soft cover, with an accompanying cardboard sheet where the project description and the definitions of the title are printed. They provide three definitions: a speed greater than that of sound in Italian; a fictional character created by Tsuji Santa for a computer and video game software company Nitroplus; and a bar in Berlin. I somehow see all interpretations of this word reflected in Jarcovjáková’s creative process and the way Černá identifies her — snapshot-like imagery created with great speed and her nocturnal strolls both outside and inside as if she, indeed, was a video game character.

“What happens when somebody else interprets our life and vision?“

Jarcovjáková’s presence in the book is strong, either through self-portraiture or her shadow cast in the scenery of some photographs, we see the echoes of her desire to wander. Including symbols of quotidian life, like plates with her food and the TV screen from her living room, we begin to sense this uncensored stream of consciousness. There is a bit of erotic tension too since her imagery evokes sensations through her tender approach to the people she photographs. Domesticated animals also seem to play an important role; understood as our daily companions, the repetition of their presence somehow becomes symbolic of them being secret witnesses to our vices.

“This oscillation between depth created by her film imagery and a lack of depth sensed from her pixelated phone photographs contributes to the creation of a novel temporality and unique understanding of space.”

This oscillation between depth created by her film imagery and a lack of depth sensed from her pixelated phone photographs contributes to the creation of a novel temporality and unique understanding of space. Colour functions as a disruption, perhaps, indicating a different layer of the subconscious. But to who this subconscious belongs, remains a mystery. Trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense, our favorite Swiss psychoanalyst comes to mind… As Carl Jung said, “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”

Witnessing the flow of Jarcovjáková’s images (created in the span from the 1990s to 2022) through Černá’s careful selection, we get a glimpse of the artist’s imagination but more importantly, we formulate an idea of who she is as a photographer — a witty observer not scared of looking inward. To give somebody such freedom in making an impression of who we are shows a great openness and trust; a strong symbiosis of the two makers. Where lies the truth, we don’t know but we still have the urge to flip the pages.

Supersonico is available for purchase via Untitled Publishing here.

Libuše Jarcovjáková

is a Prague-based photographer well-known for her diaristic and hedonistic depictions of nightlife, minority groups, and marginalised people in the 1970s and 1980s in Prague and West Berlin, alongside her self-portraiture. The major retrospective of her work can be seen in her monograph Evokativ (2019) while her portrayal of the inhabitants of a clandestine gay bar she visited almost nightly, will soon be published under the title T-Club (2024).

Untitled Publishing

is an independent publishing house and a platform for photography and visual art founded by Lucie Černá. Their approach stems from the idea of being open to interpretation. Every project is a living body of work connected by a central idea and an ability to transform into different forms. They work closely with artists and showcase their body of work by publishing books, curating exhibitions, and site-specific projects. They aim to ignite a more inclusive and open way of looking at visual art.

Text by Linda Zhengová

Curator of Discarded Magazine & XXX

She is a photographer and writer dealing with the topics of trauma, gender and sexuality.