BY NYADZOMBE NYAMPENZA
IT gets easier to understand why Austria-born social anthropologist Martina Gruber chose to make Zimbabwe her second home.
Her wandering spirit is captured by a lingering and intimate gaze as evidenced by her recently opened photography exhibition titled The End of a Season in Harare.
The body of Gruber’s work on exhibition can be classified as landscapes, some photos have people, but may fall into the same category because of the primary focus on texture, reflections, and mood.
The photographs have a painterly feel in the handling of colour and surface. Straight readings of the material provide simple pleasures of discovering familiar terrain and common sightings.
A probing mind will find abundant symbols, and potent metaphors. Each image can be seen as portraying ugliness or beauty. It depends on the viewers’ disposition.
The title image is a minimalistic landscape of a whitewashed wall with a window. There is an air of history to the old structure.
The subject has an attractive pattern of rectangular shapes, and the dimensions of the print complement the geometry of its content.
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In the window the viewer can see an image of a wall with different shades of blue, and specks of red from exposed bricks.
A shadowy streak of brown covers what seems to be an entryway. Flickering betrays the illusion of depth.
It is the break in symmetry caused by refraction. The view in the window is actually a reflection mirrored on the surface of the windowpane.
Usually a window gives access to a different space. In Martina’s photograph, it reverts to a previous encounter.
It is a mind-bending perspective. With its philosophical tile, the picture invites the audience to meditate on how it is, and how it has been.
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