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Anna Mikuskova
Anna Mikušková Anna Mikušková grew up in the Czech Republic and now splits her time between Czech Republic and Alaska. She received an MA in English language and literature from Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the Rochester Institute of Technology in NY. For six years, she apprenticed silver gelatin printing with master printer Paul Caponigro. Before turning to visual art, Mikušková worked in the field of human rights focusing on services for immigrants and refugees. Her work frequently turns to themes of home, belonging, and the relationships we form with the environments we inhabit.
Her photographs and artist books have been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts and the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. Her work is held in private and public collections in the United States and in the Czech Republic including the Wallace Library of the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Art Gallery of the University of New England. In 2022, she was included in the 2022 Silver List.
There is something immediately appealing about Eugène Atget’s 1912 albumen silver print L’Éclipse—a sense of spontaneity, playfulness, and ease with which the Parisian photographer pulls us right into the center of the crowd that gathered on Place de la Bastille to observe a solar eclipse. I feel almost compelled to turn my head to the left to follow the gaze and hand gestures of the spectators and, like them, expectantly stare into the sky.
Atget titled his photograph L’Éclipse, but he focused his large format wooden camera on the crowd of about twenty-five Parisians that gathered on a small platform on top of the stairs of the Place de la Bastille. We can only infer what the figures are looking at from the photograph’s title or perhaps from the viewing apparatuses that several people are holding to their eyes. Others simply shield their vision with their hands, thus guiding our attention nicely to the object of their fascination. This spontaneous composition is further enhanced by the arrangement of the figures who positioned themselves in a slight curve around a column and in front of an iron fence that provides a natural frame.
In the background, several buildings establish the exact geographic location of the gathering: Phares de la Bastille. The scene is completed by a few lamps and a row of trees lining an empty street. The absence of leaves informs us that the eclipse takes place either at the very end or the very beginning of winter—a detail supported by several figures sporting long overcoats.
Judging from their clothes and in several instances work uniforms, the moon gazers are middle and working class and, except for a middle-aged woman in the row closest to the camera, mostly men and children. There is something democratic about this gathering, a nod to modernity as the photograph depicts people of different social statuses, ages and genders, a group that might not otherwise gather in one place, all intently staring into the sky. Well, all but one. A young man with a cheeky grin has climbed a bit higher on the column to get himself a viewing advantage over the crowd. However, he finds Atget, who is likely standing relatively close to his subject, more worthy of his attention than the eclipse, and looks intently in his direction for what must be a minute exposure at the least.