It’s likely that not too many people will have heard of photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, but plenty of poseurs will pretend they were always fans after they see this. As it happens, the film makes it pretty clear that she wasn’t that well-known outside cognoscenti circles until a major 2019 show in Arles won rave reviews; the struggle with obscurity, her refusal to give up, is one of the things that makes her such a winning subject here. That, and her gruff, deadpan voice which narrates this autobiographical reflection, told entirely through her photography, spiced up with a cannily deployed soundtrack of Foley noises and music, along with some nimble editing.
Unfurled in unfussy chronological order, the film recounts how Jarcovjáková was born to a pair of artists who struggled themselves to establish their reputations in post-second world war Prague where only the most socialist survived. From a young age, she wanted to be a photographer, but her applications to the equivalent of art school were repeatedly rejected as she didn’t have the right kind of proletariat background. Around the time Russian tanks were occupying Prague in 1968, she was working in a print works where she took striking shots of her co-workers, often asleep or drunk on the job. There was a husband and other lovers who came and went, a couple of abortions, and an unfeasible bit of luck that saw her travelling to Japan where she found crucial career supporters, and then a return to Prague where she drifted into the city’s underground queer scene.
The images from that 1980s era – of men in drag and women kissing one another, including Jarcovjáková herself – inevitably bring to mind the grungy imagery of Nan Goldin at the height of her addiction. Jarcovjáková shares with Goldin an almost careless approach to technique, a style that’s more about spontaneity than composition, but also like Goldin she clearly has a tremendous eye and a profound lack of vanity. There are scads of self-portraits here that capture her naked in the most unflattering of lights and positions. She also seems oddly obsessed with her own feet, and there are so many shots of naked toes that at times this feels like a very specialised kind of fetish service.
Fortunately, Jarcovjáková was also in the right place at the right time at several points in her life, available to capture the burgeoning fashion scene in Tokyo in the 80s as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall closer to home. It all makes for an absorbing portrait of a specific time.
• I’m Not Everything I Want to Be is at the ICA, London from 27 September.
