Tim Parchikov

Suspense

In cinema suspense denotes unresolved conflict, an undecided outcome, a vague and inexplicable feeling of anxiety. This effect became a popular instrument in the years following WWII and was instantly used and reinterpreted by the second wave of European existentialism to perfectly define the uncontrollable melancholy that descended on the post-war world. Unlike the big screen, where the dose of suspense is carefully measured by the film director, in real life this involuntary trepidation proved to be irrepressible and overwhelming. In modern times this primordial human trait is intensified and nurtured by mass media essentially fixated on catastrophe. Information services have globalised the space we inhabit and erased internal boundaries, but with an ultimately alienating effect: our unease has become isolation and vulnerability of the individual when faced by the unknown. The photographer is obliged to traverse space – visually, not physically – and in this sense, as a traveller, he is more unprotected than the rest of us. An equally unpredictable feeling of suspense may overtake him on a deserted embankment in Istanbul, or in the middle of a crowded square in Rome or Naples. Photography becomes a shield that protects him from stupefaction and reconciles him with uncertainty. Parchikov records the confusion that occurs as our delicate inner equilibrium teeters on the brink of collapse. The photographer’s personal aesthetic experience exposes the nervous turmoil of the situation, documents its unresolved state. 'Suspense' project is the visual manifesto of the new 'lost' generation of young people who at the turn of the century acquired complete freedom of information and movement as well as the illusion of all-pervasive communication, yet forfeited an integrated system of value judgement and were unexpectedly confronted by complete isolation. Their lives turned into a lonely journey in search of lost self-identification. Any halting point and encounter with reality during this journey became a form of suspense.