The Photograph Looked Back at Me

An image catches the viewer’s eye and captivates her. The photograph of a ghostly plant in a book about Chernobyl. The face of a miner clouded in smoke in an exhibition in Kiev. A couple of Syrian refugees arriving on Lesbos, published in The New York Times. What makes up the present? Maybe the images displayed in exhibitions, wasting away on billboards or flittering across our screens? How can an intimate moment of bewilderment or wonder be put into words?

With these texts, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung since 2015, Katja Petrowskaja has created her own genre: short prose that condenses landscape, biography, contemporary history and form into a minimal space. Precisely because she has a personal approach to everything – whether it’s the image of an old woman being carried heavenwards by a chairlift in the Caucasus or that of a house wall in Brussels after the terrorist attacks – her texts develop a force that wrings truth from the moment.
 

»Increasingly, photography seems to be viewed as a mere supplement to literary texts - the typical role model being Sebald -, but it is rare to come across a book as original and heartening as this one: reading it transforms the way we remember, as if these dialogues between words and photographs restored a perspective we had forgotten.« Michele Neri, Il Foglio

»There are books you wish you always had room for in your backpack. Books to carry around, for company, or as a kind of prompt; something you can nibble on for new ideas. The Photograph Looked Back at Me is one of those books.« Giulia Galeotti, L’Osservatore Romano

»What Petrovskaya is really doing is meditating upon what it means to see. What it means to live with and in history. To be a viewer, to be sure, but also a participant. The images stick with you.« Bodil Skovgaard Nielsen, Information

»Katja Petrowskaja is a master at conjuring up stories that always have a connection to the present and at the same time become subtle lessons in history from photographs. Reading her perceptive and multi-faceted ideas is gratifying and has a long-lasting effect, as her interpretations of the photographs open up cognitive processes. In the end, we see our present and history with different eyes and have also explored other realities en passant: this is the extraordinary achievement of this beautifully designed book.« Bernd Stiegler

»In his often-quoted poem about an archaic torso of Apollo, Rainer Maria Rilke noted that ›here,‹ in marble so glistening it seems to breathe, ›there is no place / that does not see you.‹ Katja Petrowskaja's The Photograph Looked Back at Me is an offspring of this insight. In prose pieces brimming with ardor and prudence alike, she reflects not on the stone of yore, but on the modern mysteries of photography. What is a historical record? How do gestures frozen in time affect us? And what, pray, may be seen with eyes wide shut? Like Rilke, Petrowskaja knows the secret message of such encounters: ›You must change your life.‹« Aris Fioretos

»A picture, it is often said, is worth a thousand words. But the problem is that pictures don't communicate in words at all: they are mute, you have to make them speak. Katja Petrowskaja is a master of this art. The Photograph Looked Back at Me makes us see pictures in a whole new way – enriched by the words of a great author.« Peter Geimer, Director of the German Center for Art History, Paris

»Katja Petrowskaja brings to life the wandering shadows of the past with infinite sensitivity, as though she feared that they might vanish again at any moment.« Oliver Mony, Livres Hebdo

»With her book, [Petrowskaja] enters the realm of great photographic literature, represented by authors like Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and W.G. Sebald. In the future, we will have to consider the author of this book a member of this circle as well.« Anton Holzer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Short, gripping reflections on life, contemporary history and her own way of storytelling, condensed into miniatures ... [Petrowskaja] is one of the most important literary voices of our time.« Die Zeit

»History does not repeat itself, but words and images have the power to travel through time. They are as ambiguous as life. This book shows this with great intensity. One wants to read – and look at – it again and again.« Marie Luise Knott, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»In Katja Petrowskaja’s works, almost every time one enters a – new – image space, one feels the pain of realising that the past already contains the future.« Rüdiger Schaper, Der Tagesspiegel

»It’s impossible to write about photography in a more poetic way!« Anna Prizkau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»[Petrowskaja] moves timelines, places, landscapes and in doing so creates a space for new perspectives.« Der Spiegel

»[Petrowskaja] uses the images as a starting point of her narration and achieves intense focus and depth in doing so.« Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung

»The arsenal of images that Katja Petrowskaja lends voice to in her miniatures is inexhaustible. ... Petrowskaja's impressive texts intensify the glimpses that jut out of history and into the present.« Jörg Magenau, Deutschlandfunk

»[The Photograph Looked Back at Me opens] a door to times gone by and yet [tells] so much about our present.« Kristine Harthauer, SWR2