Marie Tomanova: 5 East Broadway
Fotograf Gallery, Prague
November 17, 2023 – December 16, 2023
Curated by Thomas Beachdel
When the image is new, the world is new.
—Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
—Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Fotograf Contemporary is pleased to present Marie Tomanova’s first solo exhibition at Fotograf Gallery. Titled 5 East Broadway, it features an entirely new body of work by the artist. The exhibition combines for the first-time color, black and white photography, and short films to present a nuanced and multi-faceted vision of powerful individuality. Between February and May 2023, Tomanova rented a 3.5 by 3.5 meter studio located at 5 East Broadway—literally, a small, crowded room—on the fourth floor of a New York City walk-up building and invited dozens of youth to come and tell her their dreams, to dance, to take photographs, and to film.
5 East Broadway is a specific, precise, focused, and yet expansive project. It is deep with perception and feeling. Within the space of this single address in the heart of NYC’s dense and vibrant Chinatown neighborhood, Tomanova creates an intense condenser—a crystallization—of youth experience. Geographically limiting her project 5 East Broadway to only this place—entrance, stairway, hallway, small studio and the roof—allows Tomanova to focus on a certain sense of interiority against the backdrop of the city itself and all of the dreams that have collected to bring people to this city, this place. 5 East Broadway is both portraits of others and a self-portrait of Tomanova herself, having been drawn to New York City, or having lived here, in a remarkably similar way as the subjects in the photographs. This tension between portrait and self-portrait is something perhaps hinted at in Self Portrait (Shadow) (2023), in which Tomanova’s shadow occupies a place on the roof almost overlapping that which is occupied by Kaia in the portrait Kaia (2023), and perhaps even more obliquely in the abstract Untitled (2023), in which binaries are dissolved in a fiery line eroding clear demarcations or divisions.
In a process that interweaves taking photographs with filming conversations about hopes and dreams and experiences, Tomanova collaborates with her subjects to reveal a certain presence, investigating the idea of what it means to represent a person, of what is a portrait. The resulting photographs and new short films are direct and forthright, displaying the hallmarks of her earlier Young American and New York New York projects but infused with a depth that comes from time. There is a longitudinal aspect of this project. While Tomanova has invited people she hasn’t yet worked with—Laura, Toni, Shorty, Simone, Kayra, Elizabeth—there are many that she has been photographing for years —Atticus, Seashell, Natalie, Isabel, Doe, Makenna—since 2016 in some cases. At 5 East Broadway, Tomanova creates a portrait of youth as a part of her larger body of work that attests to her ongoing consideration of what it means to depict individuality and identity, her own and that of others.
—Beachdel
Marie Tomanova: 5 East Broadway Films
Beat of My Heart (2023) (14:35)
25 Dreamers (I Want to be the Next Courtney Love…Only Better) (2023) (18:05)
Put Dijkstra and Teller in a blender, add a dash of Tillmans, Goldin or Bey, and flavor with some of the real and unreal.
—Thomas Beachdel
—Thomas Beachdel
These latest films are the beginning of a new trajectory for Marie Tomanova. They are guided by an intentionally raw and direct lo-fi immediacy for a “just as you are” feeling emphasizing the celebration of individual identity that was established in Tomanova’s critically acclaimed Young American (2019) and New York New York (2021) projects. For Beat of My Heart, Tomanova gives the simple direction or prompt to “pick your favorite song, play it on your phone, and dance to it.” The result is an intensely focused view into a relationship between music and self against a continual white-noise background drone of a fan. This underlying consistency is the only one in the film as the music, dancing and expression change with each individual. While the project is mildly evocative of Rineke Dijkstra’s The Buzz Club, Liverpool, UK/Mystery World, Zaandam, NL (1996-1997), Tomanova has created a sense of contained and open intimacy within the small space of her studio. Through establishing a connection with each individual, many of whom she has already worked with, she adds an important longitudinal aspect that is one hallmark of her practice. Moreover, Beat of My Heart was created to be shown or installed in conjunction with 25 Dreamers (I Want to be the Next Courtney Love…Only Better) in which these very same youth tell Tomanova about who they are in the context of their dreams. Desires, hopes, fears, nightmares, anxieties, and the outlandish pour forth in a choppily cut, blunt, and direct manner—again—against the lo-fi background hum of a fan and the sounds of the city and the occasional incoming text message alert or the subtle acoustic presence of Tomanova herself. It is a richly Freudian landscape alert with signs and the deep subconscious. It is a window through which we are allowed to gaze and reflect on our own state of identity and dreams, of who we are and who we thought we would become. Of what we wanted then and what we want now. Of the passage of time and what we have gained or lost; It is about what we all dream to be.