Jakob Dellacher’s new photo book Polar

Barbariga / Fort Forno / 23 / 9 / 2022 / Talk

Jakob Dellacher’s new photo book Polar is one of those works that doesn’t just accept, but fully embraces the idea of skate­board­ing both as the next eph­em­er­al mundane phe­nomen­on and, sim­ul­tan­eously, as a com­monly cru­cial prism into, reflec­tion of, and trans­la­tion tool for the wider human real­ity where it belongs. On equal terms jux­ta­posed with the author’s grand­fath­er, Peter Breit­fuss’ own pho­to­graph­ic works through the same coun­tries while we were roughly the same age in a sense kill all pos­sible myth­i­fic­a­tion of skate­board­ing all the while expir­ing its essence for the onlook­er to breathe in. Regard­less of the era, con­text, dif­fi­culties, hor­rors, pol­lu­tion, bull­shit; what really shines through those tem­por­al par­al­lels (that are not without being remin­is­cent of Richard McGuire’s) is the undeni­able beauty of the world and activ­ity of the liv­ing. The com­par­is­ons and emer­ging pat­terns spon­tan­eously work as a fil­ter for dif­fer­ent levels of import­ance, focus­ing more on the scener­ies, smiles and thoughts than on an Earth core cer­tain mer­chants would have it to be made out of ureth­ane. Skate­board­ing is put back into its place as an access­ory — but its omni­pres­ence on the more recent scenes only make it all the more mean­ing­ful as a uni­ver­sal toy that fun­da­ment­ally is designed to decipher the world.

This year at Vladi­mir, Jakob will be present for a Polar pro­ject-related talk and photo exhib­i­tion at Fort Forno, Bar­bar­iga; so get ready to split that cab, walk through the forest then along the coast, and then maybe jump some rocks — it is not to be missed.