Poignant Pics no. 24 // Diana Nicholette Jeon on Anna Karaulova’s “quest” and “dreams of the ocean”
Welcome to no. 24 in our series Poignant Pics, where we've asked photo curators, educators, collectors, and makers to share a brief essay on a photo that has significantly changed the way they think or look at the world.
In this issue, our editor Diana Nicholette Jeon writes about two of Anna Karaulova’s images and how she felt when seeing them for the first time.
A LONGING FOR PLACES WE HAVE NEVER KNOWN
“As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.” –Carson McCullers
Seeing these two images together on Anna Karaulova’s Instagram page reminded me of the recherché coming of age film, Not Waving But Drowning. I don’t know if the filmmaker was intentionally invoking the eponymous 1957 poem by Stevie Smith or the 1979 song entitled Not Waving that references it. Perhaps both.
It’s a film comprised of two separate stories created from a short and a feature. The characters represent the dilemma of choosing between what you have known and what you hope to know–the juxtaposition of longing for the past vs. a desire to explore–a classic American teen narrative. But young and invincible only lasts until the possibility of an untimely demise makes their acquaintance.
Years ago, I arrived by cruise ship into the then-sleepy fishing town of Cabo San Lucas. Moments after I waded knee-level into the Pacific, that omnipotent ocean sucked me under and cascaded me roughly against the ocean floor while forcefully sucking me out toward the horizon. Once shore re-emerged in view, she took me back out again. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t find my balance, couldn't find my way out. I was sure I would die. I most definitely was not waving.
dreams about the ocean
Looking at Karaulova’s abstract image with its broken, twisted, and taped emulsion, I remembered that day in Cabo: my excitement to experience the unknown, and how the adventure ended with a desperate longing for the familiar. I had no idea she had named it dreams about the ocean.
quest
In the group of dreamlike yet battered and bandaged images that make up the second image, I saw the verisimilitude that youth provides to confront adulthood’s indubitable quelling of innocence. I later learned Karaulova titled it quest.
These works are beautiful yet bedraggled; circuitous yet adroit. Paired they command a presence greater than the sum of their parts, similar to the short and the feature that comprise Not Waving But Drowning.
I look forward to seeing more of this type of work from Anna Karaulova.
- Diana Nicholette Jeon
Bio
Anna Karaulova is an artist, who started her career in art with photography. Later she went beyond it while leaving photography as the main tool of her creativity. Now Anna is experimenting with combining photography with other visual media such as embroidery, printing on fabric, scans, experimenting with film photographs in a dark room. As a result of her experiments Anna released a photo book, where she used embroidery; had an exhibition where imprints taken with ink and then printed on fabric, became a part of the exposition. Topics that Anna works with mostly in her art include corporeality, intimacy, and self-identity.
More of her work may be found on her Instagram.
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an artist based in Hawai‘i and an editor at One Twelve publications.