Markéta Luskačová – “Child's Play” at Stills

by Matilda Kay

This summer, the Edinburgh gallery Stills presented the first Scottish exhibition of works by Prague-born, UK-based photographer, Markéta Luskačová. The fifty-two images jointly selected by Luskačová and the curatorial team at Stills spanned from 1964 to 2009 and included selections from Luskačová’s most acclaimed series including: Pilgrims; Juvenile Jazz Bands in the North of England; London Markets; Chiswick’s Women's Aid, and carnivals in the Czech Republic. Weaving together the themes of childhood, nostalgia, worship, and play, the works memorialise people and places, cultures and communities that are disappearing or have already been lost. Luskačová toys with our understanding of time, producing a tender exhibition which sits in the negative space between lived experience and collective memory.

The gallery space itself is stripped back; ascetic yet calming. A place for peaceful contemplation, a refuge from the overwhelmingly frenetic Edinburgh Festival. The energy here is on the walls. The images seem charged and defy any preconception that their muted tones – they are all black and white – might constrain their vivacity. Microcosms of culture and time, in Luskačová’s work myriad lives are captured in carefully composed images.

Spanning four decades, the shifts within Luskačová’s creative methodology are evident. Looking down the exhibition space, the images are recognisably archival - a physical timeline documenting Luskačová’s personal experiences, and the experiences of others. Images of children in domestic abuse shelters or perched on grimy pavements are nestled between light-hearted scenes of playground tussles, little girls jumping rope, jubilant carnival marches, and street musicians. The room presents the whole spectrum of childhood experiences, capturing all the emotions that colour early life.

Markéta Luskačová, Girls jumping over a rope in the school playground, 2000, London.

The theme of childhood dominates Luskačová’s portfolio. Quintessential childhood activities pepper the walls. Girls jumping over a rope in the school playground (2000), shows six blissfully unselfconscious girls engrossed in a simple skipping game. Girls running in the playground (1988) emphasises nonchalance, the curious ease of being which is confined to childhood. These images pulse, as if they are on a cusp. There is a sense that the pace of childhood is a thing that refuses to be captured in images that we feel might move when we look away – like a photographic game of musical statues.

Markéta Luskačová, Girls running in the playground, 1988, Francis Holland Lower School, London.

There is alchemy in Luskačová’s ability to make you nostalgic for a life unlived by you. Merciless playground politics, grazed knees, pinstriped girls’ dresses, shared school lunches; they all transmit you have outgrown. The familiarity of these images draws you in, allowing you to rediscover the novelty and tenderness of childhood. Luskačová captures the pace and turbulence of childhood. Fractious emotions are implied by the furious waves pictured at Whitley Bay, and in the grinning faces of playground menaces.

Luskačová explores the tempestuous, whiplash nature of being a child, moving between commonly recognisable scenes and surreal modes of life and play. The images have a dream-like quality, often bordering on surrealism. One photograph, Lion cub, dog, and two children (1977) makes it hard to believe that these are casual snapshots of a past life. The pick and mix characters seem novel, farcical, and feel staged.  Luskačová is artful in her control of form and composition, often making you forget that these are photographs of a lived experience, not an imagined spectacle.

Markéta Luskačová, Lion cub, dog, and two children, 1977. From series: Photographs from Spitalfields.

We are offered a testimony to community and memory. These are untouched situations and very documentary-like in their fidelity to the human experience.  Luskačová works with truth, and therefore presents with humanity. She does not examine what she sees voyeuristically, rather she supersedes any invented inflations, patiently focusing on reality, the product of which is a stark factuality which seems almost comedic at times. Luskačová was a student of sociology prior to her photographic career, a fact that consistently informs her approach to making art.

 By photographing these moments, she, and by extension we, are witness to their existence. This exhibition is curated by the hand of a chronicler and speaks a language of remembrance. Luskačová gifts agency to the cultures and people that have been resigned to the margins of history. These disintegrating cultures and practices seem steeped in something ominous and untouchable, bordering on mythological. Luskačová does a kindness to push them back into public memory. This is not simply a reappraisal, rather, it is a memorial.

Markéta Luskačová, Early Morning at Chiswick Women’s Aid, 1977

Luskačová does not shy away from strife. Rather, she embraces it. Steering clear of excessive or purposeful sentimentality, she often focuses on gritty realism rather than idealised, saccharine childish dreams of halcyon days. It pulls a nerve and is attentive to the strife which was at the heart of many of these cultures. One image in particular comes as a painful surprise. The image depicts children, cocooned, protected, warm as they are muffled between layers of blankets. Connotations of safety are undermined on reading the catalogue, where you note the title Early Morning at Chiswick Women’s Aid 1977; our ignorance dissolves. This is an image from a domestic abuse shelter, not a homely nest.

Markéta Luskačová, Rest time after lunch, Francis Holland Lower School, London, 1988.

The magnitude of their strife is further emphasised by the image hanging next to it, ‘Rest time after lunch 1988’. Almost identical in composition, also populated by small nesting bodies, a different context means that they are radically different in terms of their emotional undertones. There is a sense of timelessness in these photographs which is jarring. You want their pain to remain contained, distanced from modern comfort, yet it does not. You ache for these little characters and empathise with the innocence. Luskačová understands the importance of realism, especially when documenting strife. These people demand respect, asking for their pain to be considered.  These images are their eulogies.

All images are taken from the exhibition pamphlet, courtesy of Stills centre for photography