A Double Sided Love
Text by Francesca Orsi
First published in Yet Magazine, January 2015
Love. A replicated love, taken from intimate wedding photo albums, reconstructed through old newspapers and film footage, staged like in a 70s photo novel or simply testified by images of a hindered feeling. Love in India, the slightly tragic one, forbidden by parents, religious and social constraints; and the one of the movies, the love of Bollywood films, eyeing at a polished bright future, at the staged feeling of Indian symbolism’s kitsch, of a prince’s silhouette on a white horse over the ruins of an overcrowded city.
Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty is measured by polyhedral visions about marriage and feeling of love, highlighting the point of view recognized by Indian society; one made of appearances, where love abides in eden made lush gardens and princely houses, mountain trips and daydreams under the drapery of a four-poster bed; and the clandestine one, displayed against the blue walls backdrop of the Love Commandos’ shelter, where big hearts appear as stand out elements of the room. Pinckers draws from the Indian social reality representation, where the reciprocated feeling is, in most cases, expressed in the lovers’ elope and the family non-recognition and where True Love – not imposed and planned – finds support in Love Commandos, an association that gives aid and shelter to these fugitive couples. With the same precise and skilful visual language, Pinckers is also narrating of ostentatious love, staged by religious and social rituals, with its opulence of colours and symbols displaying loudly, thus creating a perfect orchestration between a reality of blood and pain and the fictionalized, carried out by the dream of love. In a way, almost an encounter between reality and fiction.
The beauty of Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty and the skill of Pinckers, resides precisely in these two different facets of love mixed in a fluid narrative, without undoing the peculiarities of both, like water and oil emulsified together. Smiles and reflections come as natural as looking through a close and careful editing, without taking away the irony, irony resulted from a short circuit between old traditions, and a glimpse into the promise of a better future made of white horses running free and an inscription that says “You really can change the world if you care enough”.