Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde and Cat's Cradle
12:00 AM |
| Anslem Kiefer, Untitled (Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde), 1975-80 |
Depicting a pitch black, dystopian world, Anslem Kiefer's Untitled gelatin silver print captures a hauntingly eerie scene. Illuminated by a harsh spotlight, the mushrooms stand as testament to nature's tenacity, while the glass bottle is a stand-in for man's presence. Reminiscent of photographs taken after the dropping of the atom bomb, the contrast in this photograph makes the white snow taken on an ashy quality. The singed nature of this photograph is further explained by the text written in with pen, reading after translation, "Seigfried Forgets Brunhilde."
Alluding to Richard Wagner's epic opera in four parts, "The Ring of the Nibelung," Untitled documents the devastation Valhalla after, according to Norse mythology, all of the gods and demons have an epic battle that engulfs the entire world in flame.
But what drew me to this photograph wasn't its mythological content. I found this world to be more like Vonnegut's Snowball Earth from his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle.
"There were no smells. There was no movement. Every step I took made a gravelly squeak in blue-white frost. And every squeak was echoed loudly. The season of locking was over. The Earth was locked up tight."
Slashing through the photograph is what seems to be a valley formerly filled with water. Now it gleams metallic. The long shadows cast by the light source have more substance than shapes casting them. Only the glass bottle seems held firmly in place. I imagine it was this uncapped bottle that housed the shard of Ice-Nine before it was released.
Drawing on ancient and modern influences, Anslem Kiefer captures with his camera what writers aspire to describe in hundreds of pages of text. This photograph serves as commentary on past destruction as well as a warning against future devastation.
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