A Mirror in Macedonia by Lecturis

A Mirror in Macedonia Neil Folberg

Lecturis

Skopsko Pole (Skopje), seen from Gornjane

In temperature well below freezing, I was standing on a cliff overlooking a vast white sheet of ice some 50 meters below me that extended north into the Arctic Ocean towards a slight sliver of an island that rose out of deep blue waters. The island was crowned with an aura of pale amber clouds that dissolved into a cold blue sky. I had visions of a minimalist landscape in which the icy foreground reflected the simplicity and serenity of the sky when my medium format Rolleiflex camera with its $30,000 high-resolution digital back stopped working. Though I managed to make the photograph after restarting the camera, I realized I would have to send it back to the German factory for repair. I was in Iceland finishing a project. Past projects have produced over half-a-dozen books and more than one7

hundred solo exhibitions around the world. But there is one project, my very first, that has never been published. Back home, I called Rolleiflex and they advised me to ship the balky camera to them in Germany. A well-designed camera becomes an extension of eye and hand. With use, you become aware of its quirks and strengths. You learn what to ask of it and to anticipate its response; that, in turn, affects your vision and the way photographs are made. A good camera, like a friend, develops a personality. Cameras like this one are not mass-produced machines made on an assembly line. Each was handcrafted by a few technicians working together in Braunschweig, Germany. My camera would be repaired by someone whose name I have known

for years, Rolf Daus, who now works only two days a week. So, I packed it up reluctantly. When would I see it again? What would I do without it? Already, I was missing the camera and worrying about it. I looked to the shelves in my studio where I store equipment. My first medium-format Rolleiflex camera purchased when I was working in Macedonia in 1971 caught my eye. I had used it until about 2003. Now it sat idle. I picked it up and looked through the square ground-glass viewfinder and tried but failed to bring the distant hills of the Galilee into focus by turning the focus knob all the way in: the infinity focus needed to be adjusted. The shutter worked well, it clicked and stayed open for a bit more than the requested half-second as the mechanical curtain pulled aside to permit the film to receive the light and then closed again. The mirror in the viewfinder rose to expose the film and snapped back firmly after the exposure. As I turned the film-advance lever I watched the cogs inside the back engage and turn. This was the first model with a built-in light meter, the SL66E but it no longer worked. It should, I thought, at least be in working condition. Maybe they still have parts, maybe Rolf could repair it. I’m not sure that I will ever use it again as the films that I used are no longer manufactured. It made no

sense at all to fix it. But it fit my hand perfectly and it ran well, like a precision mechanical watch with all its gears turning harmoniously, engaging and clicking softly, enticing me. I turned to look at some of the photographs that I had made with this camera over a period of five months in Macedonia in 1971. These images entrance me because their power transcends the days that have passed. They have been beckoning to me for years. They were made in the days when photography was simpler, direct and more honest. They were made in the days when digital referred to your fingers, which meant staining your fingernails brown in the developer as you watched the image form under dim red light in the darkroom. I printed these rich selenium-toned silver prints on baryta-coated cotton fiber paper made by a company called Agfa. No one makes such beautiful silver-rich paper any more. Like so many photographic manufacturers from that era, Agfa is long bankrupt. The film that I used, Kodak Panatomic-X, has not been made since 1987. I no longer develop silver prints in trays of chemicals under red light. The people in the pictures are now 48 years older if they are still alive. I am 48 years older. The country they lived in, Yugoslavia, no longer exists. The prints

have aged well, surely better than the people depicted in them. The oxidized silver embedded in the paper’s glossy gelatin emulsion has a deep, warm tonality expressed in rich shades of gray and black. Time and space are compressed into two dimensions on the surface of this paper, but the illusion presented by a good image wellprinted is four-dimensional. How can a mere representation affect us more than reality itself? That is the conundrum of art. I was young; this was my first project; fading memories renew themselves when I look at these prints. But there is more here than personal memory. The images are more compelling after a long absence. I wasn’t surprised when I gently placed the antique camera into the parcel next to the modern digital one and sent it off to Germany for repair. I was introduced to photography in 1966 at the age of sixteen at the People’s Art Center in St. Louis, the youngest in that small group. My father gave me a 35mm rangefinder camera, an Argus C3; 1966 was the last year of its production but my father found me an older, used model. It was a heavy, clunky box, known to many photographers as the “brick”, but it had a good lens, it was reliable and well regarded. I learned the basics: exposure,

development, composition, printing. When my teacher suddenly disappeared (he was busted, I later heard, for selling something illegal), I felt deprived. Soon after, I went with my parents on a trip to New York State, where my father had some business and we passed through Rochester, the home of Eastman Kodak and the George Eastman House, a museum of photography. I saw the sign and went in to look around. There I recall standing mesmerized in front of one of Ansel Adams’ large blackand-white prints on a stairwell, his iconic 1944 image of “Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine.” I know this print very well as it now hangs in our home: majestic snow-capped mountains under a clear, nearly black sky. The white gleaming mountains tower above black hills in deep shadow, while a single horse, illuminated by a narrow beam of light, grazes in the field below. It is a dramatic image made on a cold winter morning from the platform on top of his sedan, while his wife Virginia and son Michael stood nearby trying to stay warm. They had just come from the Japanese detention camp at Manzanar, some miles south of Lone Pine, where Ansel had been documenting the camps resident Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there under emergency orders during World War II. A museum guard passed

Macedonia 1971

Ropemaker, Prilep Page 2

Pelagonian Plain from Varoš, Prilep Page 4 & 5

Skopsko Pole (Skopje), seen from Gornjane Page 6

Musicians, Lazaropole Page 13 left

Dancing, Lazaropole Page 13 right

Kosta and friends, Skopje Page 16

Moslem circumcision

Boy playing, Skopje Page 19

Kratovo Page 48

Gjurgjovden (St. George’s day) at cemetery, Skopje Page 28

Girl working in tobacco fields, near Kumanovo Page 35

General Negrija, Galičnik Page 41

procession, Gorno Kosovrasti Page 42

Village of Lazaropole Page 56

Village of Galičnik Page 57

Two-tined pitchforks, Sopot, Titov Veles Page 58

Tobacco drying on porch, Delčevo Page 59

Man and wife with oxen, Mirkovci, Skopje Page 60

Man and wife at home, Bulačeni, Skopje Page 61

Wooden wagon, Sopot, Titov Veles Page 64 left

Winnowing wheat, near Kočani Page 64 right

Woman gathering wheat, near Kočani Page 65

Old man, Banjane Page 62

Young woman, Mavrovi Anovi Page 67 & Cover

Hands, Bit Pazar, Skopje Page 63

Bundles of rope, Bit Pazar, Skopje Page 68 left

Balancemaker, Bit Pazar, Skopje Page 68 right

Watering cans, Bit Pazar, Skopje Page 69

Wooden wagon wheel, Carina, Lake Prespa Page 70

Pitcher and bowl, Gostivar Page 71

Vardar River, Titov Veles Page 73

A window on Macedonia Ilina Jakimovska

In temperature well above freezing, I am sitting on a porch facing Vodno, a low mountain south of Skopje, Macedonia’s capital. Its slopes are still snowy white, while the cable car that leads to its top is dormant due to the pandemic. The city resembles a meagre version of itself, lacking the vibrant sounds of its open markets, the laughter of students ending their school day, the chatter of the coffee-drinkers sunbathing on the pedestrian street that leads to its main square. All of them - the street, the square, most of the schools and the country have changed their names since Macedonia gained independence in 1991. History moves in mysterious ways in this part of the Balkans, at times dragging, and at other times accelerating its pace, according to its own puzzling fancy. Macedonian traditional culture, as many others in the world, thinks of time as cyclical. This is reflected in numerous customs, beliefs and symbols – the shape of the ritual round bread that is shared during important festivities, giving names to children after the names of 102

their grandparents and the dancing of the circular ‘horo’. These all suggest that the continuation of life must be nurtured and evoked, not merely left to the whims of higher forces. An important part of those efforts is appreciating the past and binding it to the future. When I recently saw Neil Folberg’s photos of Macedonia, I was seduced by their beauty, but also perplexed by the very fact that I’m seeing them for the first time since they were created. All my colleagues seemed to have the same question: how could their historical, ethnographic and aesthetic value been overlooked for so long? Why hasn’t there been a local exhibition, a study or public knowledge about the existence of this collection. A book? One other element was critical for my emotional reaction: I, too, was born in 1971. These photos and me, we appeared in this world at the same time and in the same place. They commenced their journey at the moment

when mine had just begun. Fifty years down the road, we meet again. Just as Marcel Proust’s madeleines dipped in tea awaken memories long forgotten, they are sensory reminders of time passed. And time lost. In 1971, Neil Folberg was a 21-year old student at Berkeley. Living five months in a country like Macedonia at that time probably resembled an initiation rite for a young American. What helped, both with the common people and the authorities, was not only the fact that he spoke some of the language, but that he was simply earnest in his motives and intentions. The resulting photos reflect that attitude. Void of ambition and pretension, they depict things as they were. Quiet and humble, they dignify the subjects and their way of life. Most of them contain valuable anthropological data on agricultural practices, costumes, funeral rites, crafts, architecture or religious practices. Others are simply beautiful. However, the fact that a photographer made a conscious decision to focus upon provincial and rural environments, speaks volumes about Folberg’s ethnographic sensitivity – to capture what is soon to be erased or altered by the long arm of urbanization and industrialization.

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The accompanying essay contains amazing additional information on the historic and social context of the author’s work, as well as a recognition of the deep personal impact that this project had upon him and still seems to have. It is a coming-of-age and coming-ofprofession tale of a young artist, a James Bondesque adventure, and a tribute to the masters with whom Folberg has studied (Ansel Adams and William Garnett), all melded into one. “The photographs were made in the days when photography was simpler, direct and more honest”, writes Folberg. At times, the essay seems to be a discreet manifesto, not only about simple and honest photography, but also life. 1971-2021 It took fifty years for these photographs to be created and then re-introduced into the world in the form of a book. The circle is closing, only not completely. Other ones start to revolve around it, in concentric ripples, without a clear beginning, nor a definite end. This is how ideas and people meet, carried by the gentle waves of creation and imagination. Ultimately, timing is of no particular importance. It is the miracle of the connection that counts. Skopje, 24th of March 2021

Ilina Jakimovska is a Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia.