image by
Andrea Modica
I have read a lot about Andrea Modicas book “Treadwell” before it finally got into my hands. Often books I am buying without having seen them before turn out to be a disappointment. This one is not.
Andrea Modicas photographs don’t offer a lot of information.
What I see is a chubby girl as main character surrounded by kids of different ages.
I don’t see any grown ups, but in one or two photographs they are hinted at.
Parts of a house seated in a nowhere landscape are shown to us, and some interiors.
The kids don’t make a happy impression to me. Sometimes they are gazing unsmilingly into the camera. They are not shown running around. Most of the time they are lying on the ground or a bed in strange positions.
They are the real nowhere people sitting in a nowhere land.
I know a lot more about these kids than I am admitting now.
And this knowledge gives a different kind depth to the images I will be posting the next days. But I am not sure if this knowledge is actually needed. Looking strictly only at the photographs, they become a dreamlike quality of their own.
Nowhere land, dreamland. Though depicting an outside reality, the images are not about reality. They are about a mood, about the feeling of loss, are about fears,
maybe about a silent nightmare, they are about solitude. They are photographs about one aspect of childhood. Photographs about childhood as we could have experienced it and maybe we did.
Andrea Modicas photographs are simple and quiet. They are distant even when getting close. They are deadly serious and not romantic at all. Especially the last fact is a release for me.
