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Martin Hentschel
Maybe one day someone will write a chronicle of undignified deaths. Its sources can be assembled from thousands of newspaper reports. Those stories in which death catches the protagonists while they are involved in the most ordinary activities. Things which could also have been done sooner or later, or differently, and which nevertheless produce fatal coincidences. They are incidents that fill us with deep disquiet, precisely because they seem to be avoidable and nevertheless happen with brutal regularity. The stories Tracey Moffatt tells are of a different kind. No gazette would print them, because they are thoroughly unspectacular. On the other hand, the potential for psychological conflict contained in them could some time erupt into explosive action with spectacular consequences. All of us have to live with such events, which mostly took place in childhood or youth when our senses were not yet immune to long-term vituperation. The scars they leave behind are irrevocably implanted in the memory, from where they can break out at any time to attack the conscious. Job Hunt, 1976: After three weeks he still couldn't find a job.
His mother said to him, "maybe you are not good enough".
We look at his face, in conflict with himself and the world. The
ground is literally taken from under his feet. Leaning on the wall
of the house, his arms folded behind his back, a gloomy dejection
rises him. Moffatt opens a gulf between picture and text; in doing
so she touches on the fact that both work by means of brevity. Picture
and text illuminate momentary events within a comprehensive context.
Between these brief moments, a story with possible, divergent horizons
opens up. Perhaps the youth had long unconditionally confided in
his mother and is now deeply disappointed. Perhaps, too, it is that
she has never thought much of him, the secretly unloved son, and
through this job he is now venturing to strike a blow for his freedom.
The frustration would then be no less intense. The possible narratives
visibly extend themselves if we bring the father and brothers and
sisters into the story. All of this is left open in the hiatus between
text and picture. (…)
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