A photograph, a childhood revisited

The as-of-yet untitled work of Susana Alvarez operates within the world of a photograph revisited. Although it is not known for sure, one could guess that the image is from someone’s childhood, or at least that the individual in this image is now older. This conclusion is reached through image looking dated; it is high contrast and looks like a home Polaroid or film camera snapshot. One cannot help but delve into the psychological realm in this piece, asking questions such as: what do we really remember of our childhood? How does a child navigate a world that is constructed by adults? What do these icons, images, and symbols that we surround ourselves with mean? Socially we wonder how this child is relating to adults and other children. It seems she may be female, but that is not known for a fact, due to the gender-neutral clothing and short haircut (I will only refer to the child as “she” to keep it simple). Her gender is not exactly determined by the surroundings either; the child is in a room that might be a playroom or daycare, but she is not interacting with anything other than the tricycle she is on. I wonder what her relationship is with the person behind the camera. Her expression is not innocent or bewildered but sort of yearning and oddly almost lustful. The print causes me to ponder what feelings we are to know or not know as children, and how we are constrained in a world that is controlled and organized by adults. This work questions our roles as children interacting with an adult society and how we may revisit, block or distort our memories of these roles. (To clarify, I am coming to the conclusion about the child acting in the adult world because she is alone rather than interacting with other children, is surrounded by cartoon-like images of a squirrel, grass, and clouds that were created by adults for a background or wall decoration, and because one can guess that the picture was taken by someone older due to it’s height of point-of-view and centered composition. It has a snapshot-like quality due to it being a low-resolution, high contrast image with a conventional, centered focus.)

The child is caught, alone in this moment, posed on a tricycle donned with streamers and surrounded by cartoon figures and balloons. She herself is black-and-white, as is the tricycle. The only color occurs in some of the imagery behind, as well as the balloons and decorative circular shapes and patterns scattered throughout the image area. There seems to be an interest in color pattern that is abstract and colorful in a sweet, pastel way. What is interesting is how the bright red is in the center, almost aglow from the inside, in an area that could be from the heart or the soul.

So what is it about this moment, this memory? Is this a true memory, or has it been altered? Do we remember ourselves as black-and-white and little spots of color because photographs exist of us in this manner? Filmmaker Chris Marker wonders if we are able to remember our past beyond photographs of ourselves. Are all of our memories constructed solely through these images? This work also addresses the relation of the child to the adult, as well as the adult to the child, but not through any obvious human contact other than the role of the camera. That is only more obvious because of her gaze at the camera (and I say camera rather than viewer, due to the imagery so specifically looking like a dated photograph).

In order to understand where we have gotten in society at this point, it would be crucial to revisit the roles played in childhood, and the expects and restraints placed upon us. Perhaps they did not make sense at the time, and perhaps they do not make sense now. Many of us may recall fleeting moments, but can we truly return and feel the bewilderment of being so small and excluded, not understanding, or not knowing the proper ways and rules of the world and the proper norms and conventions of self-restraint? What would a world be like if we could get there? This causes us to stop and ponder the strangeness of it all and wonder what we thought we were doing at the time and what the adults around us thought they were orchestrating. Sometimes the “childlike” imagery that we are surrounded with is even dark and disturbing. Sometimes a red balloon does resemble a red heart, and here and there a cartoon’s grin looks more menacing then sweet. Much of our childhood is surrounded and formed by images in the media, and guessing from the dated look of this image, it was most likely television.

Many artists revisit images from our younger years in order to better understand our conception of the world. In 2000-2001, an exhibition titled “The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection” was displayed at SFMOMA. Associate director and writer Alicia Miller discusses her own childhood remembrances in a review of the show:
The myth of innocence and purity that we attach to those early years is hemmed in by remembrances of undefined awakening sexual desire and manic fits of temper and destruction; for some of us, a budding sense of morality and justice was tempered by the intoxicating power that cruelty offered. Today, in America, in a culture rife with violence, we are less and less able to believe in childhood as a haven from the darker forces of the world… Much of the work has the quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that life holds, the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child's world are rent with something untoward.
This sense of comforting objects of childhood innocence gone wrong is conveyed by a highlight of the exhibition: Gottfried Helniwein's Mickey, who looms ominously in the corner. Mickey is portrayed as larger-than-life and black-and-white with gleaming teeth. Other works include Yoshitomo Nara's The Girl with a Knife in Her Hand, Shonagh Adelman's Bad Seed 1938, of a doll’s face, David Levinthal’s portraits of Barbie and Ken dolls that address gender roles, and Takashi Murakami's mushrooms embedded with eyes. Many of these works delve into the anxieties of nightmares, turning very dark, menacing, and sometimes violent. They also address issues of being raised by television and mass-produced toys by taking TV or seemingly media-based imagery and using it as the artwork or even against itself.

I do not believe that Susana’s print has delved all the way into the world of nightmares at this particular point, but the possibility is certainly there. It is another step to explore where she may possibly go further. Exactly what was it that was so disturbing in this situation? We see a strange contrast of an unsure and uneasy child surrounded by toys and props, and who is decorated with a hopefully cheerful pattern, too bland to remedy the situation. Perhaps that tension could be heightened even more, into the subconscious and the bizarre. And maybe we could tune into those early memories and specifically how they are represented and distorted by time, society, the media and photography.