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The photograph and the attached story Sarkantyu inherited from his father and he now brings them into the present with the help of photographs, videos, a few objects and a military aerial photograph. He does not rely on his own memories but on his long-gone father?s experiences from forty years ago which are difficult to reconstruct. Of a fellow soldier from the military training grounds around Rezi who committed suicide shortly before disarmament. The story unfolds slowly and the details are given meaning image by image. The approach is slow and painful, the fragments do not transform into a complete story progressing on a logical path but steps are made forward and backward, moving closer and then back, carefully balancing. Sarkantyu cut out certain body parts from the found image and enlarged them, aligning them next to each other like an inventory. This is the reconstruction of a body, showing the hole in the trousers above the knee, the empty helmet without the head ? a skull destroyed by suicide ? and the weapon he carried. He evokes the forest which is empty now, the long deserted military training ground, puts on display the pegs of a tent and an empty envelope left behind by his father with a note describing the essence of real friendship. He presents the notes of the medical officer who precisely documented the position of the dead body as it was found. A video interview is shown with fellow soldiers who retell the story of the soldier who committed suicide and the exhibition presents photographs of the artist?s environment while researching the story.
Three story lines meet at this point, creating a shared moment of the soldier, the father and the son, which never occurred in reality. The memory of the soldier which the father used to carry and the memory of the father which the son brings to life by presenting the old friendship between soldiers create a multilayered set of memories which opens up a previously unknown dimension. The found photo offers a key not to the soldier?s life or the father?s life but to the reconstruction of memory. The series of images and objects suggests that long-gone memories and forgotten lives can be brought back to the present. But this invocation demands sacrifice: those that dig deep into memories will be forced to face their own recollections. Feelings and images brought to the surface will slowly transform our present life. This chaste unfolding, the expansion of a long-gone moment into eternity reveals not only Sarkantyu?s personal story but shows something about the essence of photography.
Author: Eszter Götz
