Image © Gundula Schulze Eldowy

Amidst a busy opening night at C/O Berlin last Friday, and above the ground-floor exhibition of Ron Galella’s popular and now well-exhibited selection of paparazzi photographs from his days as the ‘Paparazzo Extraordinaire’ in the 70s and 80s, I was introduced to the unique photographic works of Berlin-based photographer Gundula Schulze Eldowy. I had seen Galella’s works before and had the chance to watch Leon Gast’s documentary, ‘Smash His Camera’, back when I was within transmission distance of the BBC, so I found nothing particularly new upon my initial gander through C/O’s ground floor. Yet, upon ascending the stairs an entirely different world was presented. From the glitz and glamour of 70s Hollywood, I now found myself amongst the grit and grime of Berlin during the same time period. The subtle juxtaposition of these two esteemed photographers working at the same time yet in dramatically different capacities was striking. Although the genres of paparazzi and documentary photography are often, and justifiably, separated, it was interesting to note the similarity between both photographers’ approaches and methods of capturing their subject. Galella’s infamous and tumultuous encounters with Jackie Kennedy Onassis, which led to much controversy at the time and resulted in two highly publicised court cases, provided a rather obvious example of the obsessive and voyeuristic nature of paparazzi photography. What was far more intriguing, by comparison, was Eldowy’s own extensive relationship with one of her subjects, the unforgettable Tamelan. Much like a paparazzo herself, Eldowy first captured Tamelan, an elderly German woman so-called by her husband (a fond nickname that stuck), sitting by herself on a bench in 1979, ‘I watched from a distance and shot some pictures with the telephoto lens.’ From this moment, Eldowy met with Tamelan throughout the next eight years until 1987 and, significantly, would always have her camera with her, ‘It played a central role, [...] it was a kind of visiting card for me, without which we would surely never have got to know each other.’

The ‘Tamelan’ series only occupies a single room in C/O’s vast building, but it is by far the most affecting room of both photographers’ works. Depicting the ‘winter years’ of Tamelan’s life, Eldowy tells not only a story, but the evolution of a story: how a photographer can, by chance, encounter a complete stranger on the street and, over a period of several years, become involved and embroiled within that story, whilst simultaneously being told new anecdotes, old memories, and lost loves of an aging and increasingly immobile subject. From the many personal and insightful episodes the photographer spent with Tamelan, her whole life story seems to have been retold, recollected, and remembered, always, it seems, with a strong sense of sadness. Witnessing the murder of her grandfather as a child, marrying a man just before the war to then return thinking he was Jesus, two abortions, and then the arrival of a spoilt, lecherous, and abusive son who sponged off her earnings and even her pension, are just some of the chapters in Tamelan’s bleak history. These details, Tamelan’s ‘backstory’, are only disclosed in the book that accompanies the exhibition. To know these details when viewing Eldowy’s photographs is almost to miss the point. Eldowy’s subject, this strange, old woman on the park bench, is an enigmatic figure representing that stranger in the street that intrigues, that sparks a curiosity to make one wonder what kind of life they have lived. Eldowy presents the contemporary Tamelan, the woman who remains from a life lived, a life endured.

Reminiscent of the central themes that occupy Samuel Beckett’s literary works, the notions of decay and decline run throughout this series of photographs. As the images progress from year to year, we witness the shocking fate of Tamelan’s last years with a condensed rapidity that makes one tremble. Not long after the first image of Tamelan sitting on the bench, we see a photograph depicting her in hospital recovering from the amputation of all ten of her toes. Several images later, Tamelan sits her bed and stares at the camera, evidently affected, angered, by the recent amputation of one of her legs. Just a year after that, and in the final and most shocking image of the entire exhibition, Tamelan sits upright, propped up by her arms either side of her. She is nude, visibly worn, despairing; both her legs have now been amputated. The words of Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days come to mind, ‘Does anything remain?’ Winnie, in the play, awakes to find she is buried up to her waist in the ground, immobile and degraded, despairing at the cruel physicality of her body. When we age, decay, lose our family, our friends, parts of our body, parts of our memory, do we lose parts of ourselves at the same time? What remains when we reach that point after our lives, when the lives we have lived are over and we merely sit in a care home day after day waiting for the bell to ring? As Tamelan poignantly writes in one of her letters to Eldowy, ‘Then comes blessed sleep, my wish would be forever. And so every day the same.’ 

Gundula Schulze Eldowy . The Early Years Photography 1977 - 1990
Ron Galella . Paparazzo Extraordinaire
10. Dec 2011 until 26. Feb 2012