Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

27 November 2021

Travel Is Above All an Inner Journey: Interview with Photographer Sophie Denux

Photo: Sophie Denux

It is easy to see that Sophie Denux‘s photography is transporting. Hers is a discreet and elegant guidance into the culture and people of the places she travels to. Not just aesthetically pleasing, but a real representation of them, arising a humanistic feeling. She is after a deeper connection, one that is based on an equal exchange and on the respect for a land’s richness of culture. And the people generally respond by being themselves. Her stories are rooted in traditions of craft and artisanship, past and present, which translate into beautiful, enriching conversations with communities, custom and heritage.

The bi-annual independent magazine created by Sophie Denux, Toc Toc Toc Editions (Travel Observe Create), was born from the desire to share a certain vision of creation, of contemporary craftsmanship and its various players, taking the form of an invitation to discover their world, their living spaces, their workshops, their journeys. A continuum of cultural knowledge creativity.

In our interview, Sophie talks about the places she keeps returning to, about preferring films and cookbooks as travel inspiration instead of travel writing and the “stolen” moments she seeks to captures on camera.

Photo: Sophie Denux

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, preparing to shoot, where would you want to be?

I’ve just returned after 3 weeks in North East India. I spent my time photographing the backstage of a textile brand. I visited tribes of weavers and dyers who work in peaceful villages, far from any agitation, surrounded by nature. It was an absolute pleasure to photograph their process, their environment and to share meals with them. To answer your question, I would like to be there again but to discover another part of India, maybe the south which I don’t know at all.

Many of your stories are centered around the craftsmanship of the people in the places you travel to. Which is the most valuable lesson your travels have taught you?

I would say humility. In general, craftsmen are flattered that a French photographer comes to their homes and takes an interest in their work. They don’t always understand my aim because, for them, their work is natural. I feel very small in front of these people because I admire them so much.

”I am more of a documentory photographer,
I do not try to impose my universe or a style.
I’ve never tried to show only the beautiful.”

Photo: Sophie Denux

In your photographs, you capture simple, sincere moments but from a place of respect for your subject. How do you get close while remaining discrete and how do you choose the stories you want to tell?

I am very discreet by nature, so it must show in my photos. I love people deeply, but it’s true that I prefer to photograph them a little without them knowing, I don’t like poses. It is perhaps less respectful, but, in the end, the “stolen” photos are always the most successful because they are the most natural. I don’t photograph with a zoom lens, I approach my subject on tiptoe and by chance my camera doesn’t make any noise when I push the button. As for the choice of my stories, I think I am more of a documentory photographer, I do not try to impose my universe or a style.

You are a photographer as well as an editor. Has your approach to travel changed in time in terms of what you want to transmit to others? And where do you think lies the responsibility of a photographer and editor this day, when whenever one shows a place in all its beauty so many others want to follow?

I’ve never tried to show only the beautiful. My eye is often drawn to things that are pretty but as simple as possible. I’ve had the opportunity to photograph palaces, for example, and I didn’t particularly like doing that. I had to immerse myself in the past of this palace, for example, to find traces of the past, and I wanted to feel a retro atmosphere. As I said, what I like best about travelling is sharing moments with people, the simplest and most sincere ones, even without speaking to each other because we don’t speak the same language.

What I hate the most in travelling is seeing people striking a pose in front of monuments. I noticed that in India, nobody took a building for the building, as a whole or in detail. It’s the person before everything in the foreground, and the building more or less blurred or more or less visible, which is absurd in the end. It’s “Look, I was there”, but in the end, where were you? I don’t see what’s behind you. Social media has changed people’s relationship to travel and it’s sad. For me, travel is above all an inner journey, with oneself.

Appreciating the place for its uniqueness and capturing it in a way which isn’t selfish; complimenting the landscape with a beautiful yet truthful image, that’s the stories I want to discover in photographs. How do you choose your travels? Because I feel you are one of those photographers and travelers who take time to travel, who find the path that takes them to a new place by themselves, who want to truly experience a place and the way people live.

It’s true that I like to go « into detail » in a destination. I like to spend time there and come back. This was my second trip to north-east India, I’ve been to Morocco about ten times if not more, 3 times to California…

I have a degree in Geography and Ethnology, so it’s above all the people, the culture and then the landscapes that attract me.

Photos: Sophie Denux

What is it that keeps you going back to Morocco?

I think I’m really attracted to the craftsmanship, the simplicity and the hospitality of the people. The simplest moments are always the most joyful. And I also like the energy in the cities. Marrakech is 2400 km from my home and each time it’s a total change of scenery, the gates of the Orient…

”For me, travel is above all an inner journey, with oneself.”

Are there moments when you simply witness a moment without shooting any picture? Do you keep some of the most special moments you experience to themselves?

Yes, of course, and fortunately! I have a very good visual memory.

You tell beautiful stories, both visually and in writing. Do you have a favourite travel book or travel writer?

I prefer films, they inspire me more, as well as cookbooks.

It’s fine with me. I find great inspiration in films and cookbooks as well. Which would be your favourites

Films: Gandhi, Out of Africa, The Darjeeling Limited, The English Patient, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Totoro, The Scent of Green Papaya, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, The Lover, Stealing Beauty, La dolce vita, Plein soleil, and so many more…

Cookbooks
My favourites: Near and Far: Recipes Inspired by Home and Travel, by Heidi Swanson, and Wabi-Sabi Welcome, by Julie Pointer.

But also: Kalamata, by Julia Sammut and Bruno Martin, Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi, La Famille Marrakech, by Stephanie Giribone and myself.

And I was going to ask which great adventurer, traveller or travel writer you would hypothetically like to go on a journey with, but I will change my question to a filmmaker.

Wes Anderson or Tran Anh Hung.

Thank you, Sophie, for this look behind what drives you in your journeys and beautiful work.

Photos: Sophie Denux

Instagram: @sophie.denux

Deadly Kitty Collins: Ava Gardner in The Killers

Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster and Virginia Christine in “The Killers”, 1946. Universal Pictures

An adaptation after a short story by Ernest Hemingway, Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), is a tour de force of the noir genre, one that covers a wide range of noir themes and noir locations, a story with a cruel and twisted plot, in which a young but broken-down prize-fighter takes a perilous path to ruin. It was in fact only the first twenty minutes of the movie based on Hemingway’s words – that haunting opening with the silhouettes of the two hit men at night who visit the inhospitable diner in search of information for the man they are looking for, Burt Lancaster’s Swede, who is already waiting for his fate in his dark boarding room. From there, Anthony Veiller’s screenplay (with a significant contribution from John Huston, uncredited) follows insurance investigator Riordan (Edmond O’Brien) being catapulted into a shadowy scheme that unfolds a past drenched in double-crossers, violence and cynicism. Unfolding the “why”, even if we know the ending, even if we don’t understand the fatal choices that will seal a man’s fate, is what keeps us captivated. It’s the incursion into the dark and the unknown dangers, the atmosphere of fright that we are attracted to.

Burt Lancaster, in his debut role, became a star overnight. “Unlike the expansive and exaggerated characterisations of years later, the Lancaster of film noir kept his energy levels under rigid control, rarely extending himself and then only to withdraw quickly like a hunted animal,” wrote Robert G. Porfirio in his essay, No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir, from 1976. Ava Gardner also had her breakthrough performance as beautiful, sultry, double-crossing Kitty Collins. The ultimate femme fatale role was made for Ava Gardner. Her time on screen was brief, but Siodmak made the best of it. “A lot of people have told me through the years that it was The Killers that set me on the road to stardom, that defined my image as the slinky sexpot in the low cut dress, leaning against a piano and setting the world on fire,” Ava wrote in her biography. She said Siodmak coached her to create her seductive character with cat-like movements and expressions. But she didn’t need the skills of any cameraman to heighten her raw sexuality. It was instinctively hers. “Whatever it is, whether you’re born with it or catch it from a public drinking cup, she’s got it,” Humphrey Bogart remarked.

Ava Gardner in “The Killers”, 1946. Universal Pictures

Ava Gardner’s wardrobe was designed by Vera West, the head costume designer at Universal from 1928 to 1947. The signature one-strap gown in black satin Ava is wearing mimics the dark nature of the film itself and recalls to mind another famous black satin gown, Jean Louis’ design for Rita Hayworth in Gilda, also released in 1946. To it, Kitty is wearing a pair of black silk velvet sandals made for her by Salvatore Ferragamo. Swede, Burt Lancaster’s character, is entranced by her beauty when he first sees her in the black dress, leaning against a piano to sing in a hyper-stylised moment when he can’t take his eyes off of her. His girl, Lilly, also knows that he’s finished with her from that moment on.

“The Killers”, 1946. Universal Pictures

In the scene at the Green Cat café, where Kitty Collins reveals to Riordan in flashbacks what she knows about the robbery, she wears a sweetheart neckline dress with structured shoulders, a “pancake hat” with a net-like band tied around the neck and a stolen spider emblem brooch – a reference to the femme fatale and the way she weaves her lies and traps. The name of the café itself, Green Cat, is an obvious allusion to her feline name, Kitty. There is an aura of danger and fatal attraction that surrounds the place, one of those places we don’t find in reality, but which only exist in the world between pulp fiction and existentialism of film noir.

Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster in “The Killers”, 1946. Universal Pictures

The trench coat Kitty is wearing is almost as indispensable in film noir as bad weather and the time of night. The rolled-up sleeved shirts, sweaters and knee-length skirts are not. But Kitty looks anything but innocent in them. Her sultry look and magnetism were enough to establish her as a femme fatale. Ava Gardner was one of “the sweater girls” of the 40′s and 50′s, a term that described Hollywood actresses like her, Lana Turner, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell, who adopted the fashion of wearing sweaters two sizes too small to emphasize their busts and enhance their sex appeal. In the fabric rationed 1940s, function played a bigger role than fashion, which ultimately brought simple shirts like the ones Kitty dons into fashion. Ava also wore almost no make-up at all in the film. When she came on the set with her face covered in regulation MGM make-up (she had a contract with MGM and she was borrowed by the Universal studio for The Killers), Robert Siodmak ordered her to wash it off. She wore no make-up, except for Vaseline on her skin to create a soft sheen, and lipstick. The natural lighting, which accounts for the deep visual impact of the film, was enough to give Kitty “a soft glow, making her appear even more sensuous”. Ava Gardner’s biographer, Lee Server, wrote that “the smooth ivory tone of her skin produced such a pure white image that Bredell (ed. note: Elwood Bredell, the cinematographer) based his whole lighting treatment around it”.

Ava Gardner in “The Killers”, 1946. Universal Pictures

Note: This is a revised edition of a previously published article, in March 2014

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume | | Comments Off

15 November 2021

Read Instead…in Print

A photo of a good book about cinema. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

Camille Paglia’s essay on Hitchcock’s The Birds, a booklet part of the BFI Film Classics, is a superb piece of writing about cinema, and the best and most comprehensive I have read about the film itself. It’s beautiful how Camille Paglia objectively redeems Hitchcock’s heroines and especially Tippi Hedren’s place among the Hitchcock heroines (as when driving her Aston Martin free, liberated, driving “as a vivacious expression of her combative personality”), especially in a time when so much effort has been put into criticising Hitchcock’s female depiction. It’s a compelling character analysis that extends to the other protagonists as well, including the ruggedly masculine Rod Taylor, which I have always considered the most modern of Hitchcock’s male characters. May I also say that it’s liberating to read someone’s disliking of a character, as is the case here with Veronica Cartwright’s Cathy Brenner? The author considers every aspect of filmmaking, from aesthetic to technical elements, and her visual, cinematographic writing style makes the reading very engaging, and I particularly appreciated how she highlights the way costume fundamentally relates to the study of film narrative and mise-en-scène. Oh yes, the mise-en-scène, with its center stage the boat-dotted harbour of the tranquil fishermen’s village, so particularly comforting… until it is not.

November Newsletter: On Noirvember and Tom Waits’ Noir Sensibility

Right: Film poster by Tony Stella for the neo-noir “Gloria”, 1980

Photos: Classiq Journal, unless otherwise stated

You take a deeper and deeper dive into noir’s murky stories. The more obscure, the more forgotten, the less known, the better. A cinephile is truly an explorer. You want to discover a film on your own or at least follow a tip to find a film and maybe keep it to yourself a little longer before you tell the world. Discovering a new film you have never heard of and nobody talks about is the greatest joy.

“Hell, we didn’t know what film noir was in those days,” said Robert Mitchum. “We were just making movies. Cary Grant and all the big stars [at RKO] got all the lights. We lit our sets with cigarette butts.” We were just making movies. One of the reasons I love noir films so much is that they have hardly ever been referred to in terms of “best” films. They were films for actors, not stars. The directors and cinematographers had to be inventive and innovative (it’s where many of them cut their teeth in and created their filmmaking style) because the budgets were limited and the time-frames were short. They presented a world somewhere between pulp fiction and existentialism where life had low values and an even lower running time, a world where love is replaced by obsession and fatal desires, but found a streak of poetry in the light coming out of a street pole in a dark alley or in the smoke of the omnipresent cigar, captured the interest with an odd angle, a glowing haunted face or a sharp line of dialogue, got under the viewer’s skin with deadly femmes fatales. They were made on Poverty Row, but they revelled in their cheapness, creating their own language, honing such a distinctive and definitive cinematic style “where one did not exist before”. Film noir gives you the license to experience a world of danger, vice and darkness, but only from a safe distance. We all have a dark side.

But then there are films such as Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, a reality bite of sorts that goes down very low on the ladder of criminality: “All over the world, you’ll find small-time crooks like Skip, Candy, and Moe living on the underbelly of society, struggling to survive with their scams, abiding by their own unwritten code of ethics. I’d seen plenty of these people firsthand when I was a crime reporter. They are individuals, trusting no one, beyond politics, changes in governments, intellectual labels, and fashion. […] I wanted my film to be told through the eyes of the powerless. Cold war paranoia? Hell, these crooks were more interested in just getting by.” All Samuel Fuller’s films had this realistic feel that goes beyond genre and cinematic stylisation. Real people in real-life situations always had an intense effect on him, he would say, and he envied the gritty visual style and neorealistic approach of the Italian directors.

This Noirvember, I am diving into Arthur Lyon’s Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir and listen to the noir sensibility of Tom Waits, beginning with Potter’s Field from the album Foreign Affairs (1977), inspired by Samuel Fuller’s own Pickup on South Street. The filmmaker considered music “an essential part of every picture I make, maybe as important as the story. Before photographs and movies, people were listening to music and getting strong emotional messages.” About On a Foggy Night, from the album Nighthawks at the Diner (1975), Waits said, “this is the soundtrack for a film, the soundtrack was written quite a bit later than the film,” referring to the noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955). I like that. Just as a pre-existing song sometimes only comes alive in a film (Yasmine Hamdan’s Hal in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is one such song), in a particular story, and listening to it separately doesn’t have the same effect, not even close, I like how some other songs are inspired by movies or a cinematic element without being part of a soundtrack. Music gives voice to all kinds of drifters and dreamers, just like movies, and, in turn, the characters come alive through the music and enter our own imagination.

Right: Tony Stella illustration for The Set-Up, 1949

Viewing

In nome della legge, 1949

I was just mentioning the Italian neorealism above and Pietro Germi’s In nome della legge has exactly that gritty visual style and the neorealist setting that Samuel Fuller himself appreciated about the neorealist directors. But the stylistic framework is much more complex and contradicting, somewhere at the confluence of noir, mafia drama and Hollywood western, where Sicily becomes a frontier land, that well-known Western frontier where the very concept of law is fleeting and where justice is in the hands of the individual or of a small community. Pietro Germi considered himself “a man of other times” and unfortunately I don’t think he is appreciated at his true value.

The Beach. This one is soon to be released, but the trailer alone grabbed my attention and it will only be available temporarily, for Thanksgiving week, 22-28 November. The quietude and calmness, that incredible vastness and that great light. Capturing, but especially living, all that. Just beautiful.

La cage (The Cage), 1975

Lino Ventura is one of those actors who had something special. He stood apart through his modesty, frankness, humour and humility and a classic, distinctive elegance. He is best known for films such as L’armée des ombres, Classe tous risques, Un papillon sur l’épaule, Touchez pas au grisbi, but I always love seeing him in more under the radar movies, such as La cage. Watching his range of emotions unravel in a story that mainly takes place in a single room is a proof of his natural, instinctive talent.

Le renard et l’enfant (The Fox and the Child), 2007

It takes patience and it takes effort and time to gain others’ trust, especially when you are part of two different worlds. It’s an incredibly valuable lesson for this fast world where we want everything to happen now, and it’s a film for children and adults alike but children will respond very powerfully to it, because of the way it is told, through the eyes of a little girl and the bond and friendship she forges with a wild animal, which leads to the most wonderful adventure. It also features the most beautiful autumn scenes I have seen in a movie. I recommend the French narrated version.

And because it’s Noirvember, Detours, a series of video essays on “the bruised soul of noir film”. Of course, it takes the name after Edgar Ulmer’s Detour. In an interview with illustrator Jennifer Dionisio, who has recently created the cover art for Raoul Walsh’s noir High Sierra, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino, for the Criterion Collection, she was describing her design process for her cover art for the remastered edition of Detour, choosing to go for “a composition which reflected the grittiness and shoe-string budget of the production”.

Right: Tony Stella illustration for The Maltese Falcon, 1941

“Art is not the place for moralizing –
otherwise we would have no painting, no books,
no nothing. It’s where we explore all the thoughts
and acts we could never confess to in normal life.”
Isabel Huppert, The Sydney Morning Herald

Reading

“I realised that this is one of the reasons I don’t read on my iPad, because there are reactions in your underlining, tactile movements, textures, a series of stimuli to your memory that don’t exist in digital space (or at least don’t work for me: I read to remember and think, not escape, I need those memories of my reads.),” says author Jorge Carrión in Against Amazon and Other Essays. Books are one of the links we have left to remain humans in a world that wants to turn us all into machines. Reading paper books also keeps us in touch with ourselves. This is what these essays are about. As Anna Iltnere, the founder of the Sea Library, recently told me in our conversation, “Some might say that reading is an act of escapism. I don’t believe in that. The words and sentences will get you to fantastic places, both emotionally and geographically, yes, but that’s not getting away. It’s arriving; at least for me.”

Jean Renoir’s portrait of his father digs deep but with the sensibility that permeates his own films into art and artists and into the life and work of an artist whose one of the greatest traits and paths towards his genius was his modesty, but also his profound connection to everything around him and life itself. Renoir, My Father is also one of those rare biographies that speaks about its writer, and what a privilege it is that the writer is one of the greatest filmmakers the world has known, just as much as it speaks about its subject.

It’s incredible how the simple story in Hedgehog in the Fog plays with children’s imagination. It is beautifully illustrated by Francesca Yarbusova, based on the sketches to the award-winning animated film directed by Yuri Norstein, from 1975, which has gained worldwide acclaim (Norstein is known for his painstaking production methods – his animation style involved the manipulation of hand-drawn paper shapes and the fog effects were created using layers of translucent paper), but I prefer the book.

Right: Tony Stella illustration for John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, 1950

Listening

PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. The style of music that feels at home for me.

Tom Waits and David Bowie (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, The Next Day). I could listen to them anytime, just as I could listen to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen anytime, but this is a time when I’m particularly drawn to their music.

Probably the best part about all this music is that I have discovered it in time, waiting for each album to be released and then purchased, or finding it by chance, going and finding it in person not knowing that it even existed, or especially setting out to search for it in stores – “by thinking with our feet and eyes,” as Jorge Carrión describes the experience of entering a bookshop, which can be translated just the same for when meandering a record store – not just benefitting from it at a click away – where is the joy in that, the anticipation, the element of surprise?

At the suggestion of Anna Iltnere, in the same interview mentioned earlier, I am recommending the Moby Dick Big Read, an online version of Melville’s magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters is read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, in a sequence of 135 episodes, publicly and freely accessible.

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s all three newsletters: Roden, Ridgeline, and Huh. Wes Del Val’s book-ish interviews. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Here’s the Thing, with Alec Baldwin. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Sophy Robert’s The Art of Travel. Monocle and Sirene magazines, in print.

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

29 October 2021

The Sea Library: In Conversation with Anna Iltnere

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

I believe it is always the simplest things and choosing your own journey, struggles and all, that hold the answer to a life well lived, a beautifully imperfect life. Putting our faith in the vastness of our imagination and in the solace and beauty of nature that brings out our softer, gentler and true side, and learning to spread our wings in our close surroundings could be the greatest journey of our lives.

One day, Anna Iltnere put her faith into her own dreams and created the Sea Library, a library of books about the sea, in her wooden cottage house by the Baltic Sea, and opened it to the whole world. And the whole world opened up to Anna. The Sea Library is not made up just of books, but of real life stories tied to the stories told in the books, and of stories woven together by Anna and all the people who enter her home or borrow books by mail. With her eye constantly drawn to the beauty and unknown of the sea and her mind constantly enriched by storytelling, Anna Iltnere has found beauty and enriched the lives of so many others. My conversation with her has been a great journey in itself and a gate to discovering not just a world of books, but your own individual world – it’s larger than the sea. And the world is your own blank map.

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

What does reading do better than anything else?

In the culture of getting away and travelling far and fast or at least dreaming about it, reading is a form of arrival. It’s a different kind of vector. When my eyes sit on the soft paper, when I feel the weight of the book in my hand and turn the pages with my fingertips, I am here. I feel very anchored when I read. As if I am where I have to be. Some might say that reading is an act of escapism. I don’t believe in that. The words and sentences will get you to fantastic places, both emotionally and geographically, yes, but that’s not getting away. It’s arriving; at least for me.

I completely agree. And I feel the same about films. Escapism is a word I have often been reluctant to use when talking about the experience of watching films. And Jean Cocteau’s words come to mind, explaining why he didn’t understand the association between movies and escapism, “a fashionable term which implies that the audience is trying to get out of itself, while in fact beauty in all of its forms drives us back into ourselves and obliges us to find in our own souls the deep enrichment that frivolous people are determined to seek elsewhere.” Is there any particular book that had a profound influence on you, that you felt that it changed you?

Oh, I love that quote. For me, the book would be RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR by Philip Hoare. It came out when I turned 33. I bought it as a birthday gift. It crucified me and I resurrected anew. It is a dangerous read, I warn you, a very seductive voice which can alter the way how you experience the sea. When I finished it, I created social media accounts for sea books with an urge to share how good the RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is and also all other books I had. A few months later I opened the Sea Library. In the following summer, I even learned to swim. I think that pretty much counts as a life-changing book.

I had abandoned social media for two years when I left my job because I didn’t want to share anything with anyone anymore except my family. I think I was tired. And thirsty for something else. I took the maternity pay and cocooned in our old wooden house on a peninsula between the river and the sea. I stopped scrolling and I even refrained from travelling. I became an old lady. Which behaved like a tomboy. I chose to sit still, to sprout roots from my swift feet. To observe nature around here and even to be bored to some extent. Boredom is foreplay to a rich imagination. It is a luxury to be bored, don’t you think? Then a day came when I knew that there is one thing that I wanted to share with others: stories about the sea.

I had a vivid dream one night that burglars had broken into our home to steal everything valuable. They carried out our sofa and armchairs, lamps, TV, Playstation, paintings and also books from the Sea Library. I just stood with my husband and sons and watched the surreal criminal procession. I felt like a Prospero about to lose his magic powers. “Remember / First to possess his books; for without them / He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command,” as Shakespeare writes in The Tempest.

When the thieves were done and gone, I rushed inside the library to check if I still had a copy of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR. It was still there, so in the dream I knew I can re-build the collection from scratch. Ironically, this is the only book that I have lost. A signed copy from Shakespeare & Company. I still believe it will return one day. Books take no shortcuts, they choose the long roads, always.

”I threw the big ideas away and just opened the doors
of our wooden house. On that day the Sea Library was born.”

I like that you mention boredom. I don’t know why people are so afraid of being bored. And I don’t understand parents who keep their children busy all the time afraid they might get bored otherwise. Boredom is not a bad thing. As you say, it is a foreplay for a rich imagination. Especially with children, they need time off, they need to let their minds free, to invent their own games and stories and to day-dream. How can they do that if we keep their minds engaged in all sorts of activities and come up with solutions for them all the time?

Yes, absolutely. Apart from letting my boys use all the gadgets they might need in the future (and already today), I make sure they are outside enough and that they are also bored from time to time. When the grumpy kicking-the-stones phase passes, they start to notice details, invent games and discover the world of insects and plants. They always come back rose-cheeked and smiling. It applies to me too!

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

What does the sea mean to you?

Unprecedented freedom. Yet I didn’t discover that until I was 32 years old. It’s strange now to imagine living a life in Latvia, a country by the sea, without really noticing the sea. It was a nice place for sunny summer holidays. That’s all. We even moved with my husband from a city apartment to a wooden house in a seaside town when I was 28, but I still didn’t see the sea, the way I see it now.

When I turned 32, dad had a car crash. There’s a seaside rehabilitation centre here in Jūrmala, and it’s where he was transported after weeks in the hospital. I didn’t have a job, was pretty much lost in what I wanted to do, so I took long walks to visit him and after each visit I went down to the beach to unwind. As I stood there and looked at the sea, it felt strange. I started to see it. I noticed how huge the sea is, how very alive. How beautiful, too. And the sea didn’t care about me at all. So in the presence of the sea, I could finally give myself a break. I have to admit, I can’t really think when I am by the sea. The white noise in my ears, the immensity of the water in front of me, and here I am – an observer, I become eyes, ears and nostrils. The gaze and the sea is a theme that captivates me. I keep writing out sentences from books about eyes and the sea. Many watergazers have eyes in the colour of the sea…

I fell in love with that liberating feeling to just be alright. The Sea didn’t miraculously heal me, no. Dad didn’t become entirely healed either. The sea made me wonder, what does that really mean in life to be healed? Life is as unpredictable and beautiful as the sea itself. In the world of opposites I found another way. A new pocket opened here at the beach, full of imperfect pearls. A pocket where I was a human being with ancient wounds that didn’t need to be fixed, standing by the ancient sea and happy in a unique way. I didn’t care about so many things from that moment on. I knew I can pretty much do whatever I wanted from then on. And that’s what I did. The Sea re-made me. Imagined me.

How did the Sea Library come to life? What was it that made you open your own library and make it available to the whole world?

I am pushing a stroller with my toddler to the seaside and am reading a book about Sylvia Beach, the bookseller in Paris. She opened Shakespeare & Company and published the forbidden book, James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s a lovely summer morning. I am 33. There’s a line in one of her letters: “I must have a bookstore. I must.” It struck me like lightning. Since dad’s car crash I had started to read about the sea a lot. The collection of books grew by itself – out of my curiosity how writers deal with this mysterious and mesmerizing body of water. On that morning I suddenly realised that I could do something about it! So it started as a fancy dream to have a bookstore by the sea with books about the sea. It took nearly a year before I realised that the first collected hundred books just had to be shared – I’m not a seller anyway. I threw the big ideas away and just opened the doors of our wooden house. On that day the Sea Library was born.

Are you still thinking about a bookstore?

If I had known right away that such a wondrous library was possible, I wouldn’t have wasted a moment. But who would have believed that a library like that could even exist? I love bookstores so much, but wouldn’t swap this strange library for anything else.

When three summers ago I announced that this private room with a few bookshelves, a desk and a couch is a library for anyone who needs it, things I couldn’t predict started to happen. I opened the library with closed eyes, to be honest. Who would dare to come, I wondered? My neighbour maybe? My mum, my sister? And if a stranger would come, should I trust them? Would she or he bring the books back? But I silenced this anxious mind and had faith. Soon I started to receive messages from people I didn’t know and who lived overseas: they wanted to give away books.

The Sea Library is three years old now with nearly 600 books on its shelves. Only half of them I have bought. I know, there are a lot more books in homes where avid readers live, but all these titles are about the sea and most of them have arrived with their own stories, not only the ones written on their pages. I am proud of my three-year-old toddler, a sea monster actually, growing fast and steady.

In the Sea Library there are nearly no rules to apply to readers and no rules to follow in building it. Here you can read the borrowed books as long as you need to and return them when you can. One reader returned two other books instead of the one I had lent. But it was a good deal – both were brilliant. I have received so many gifts, including seashells, drawings, prints and paintings, a little sliver from John Steinbeck’s boat, a mermaid’s purse – that to be generous in return is like breathing, like tides. Books have to be read. That’s the most important thing. If no one else reads them, I do. I see which copies haven’t been borrowed for too long, take them from a shelf and read at night. To my boys or to myself. “They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will,” as Joyce wrote in Ulysses. I scratch that itch. Scratch books behind their dog-ears.

The Sea Library cannot be tamed. It is something of a sea itself. In Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson, Moominpappa tries to understand the sea. He makes observations, writes down facts, but in the end he remains very puzzled. “I understand the sea less than ever,” he says, “there’s no system or order in things at all.” His idea was to discover what secret rules the sea obeys. But he couldn’t find any. “The sea is all the time changing the way it behaves. It seems to do just what it likes.”

I never know what the sea will look like tomorrow morning here at Asari beach where I cycle as early as I can and how it will change an hour later when I am about to leave and look back over my shoulder. In the same way I don’t know what books will be sent here tomorrow, (except the ones I have ordered), I don’t know who will visit (when another lockdown will be over). The Sea Library is like a movie I keep watching. A retired captain once came with his wife and showed me their black and white wedding photos. An old boatbuilder visited and gave me 30 books from his own collection. “No one reads them anymore at my home, maybe they will find readers at yours,” he said when zipping his now empty bag.

There are also more silent and distant fans of the Sea Library, like one woman who e-mailed from afar that the idea of this place helped her to get through the first lockdown. The Sea Library gives hope in some peculiar way. Things like that can’t be written down in a business plan.

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

It’s so true that books are meant to be read and loved. They have a life of their own. And you have a personal library to share with the world. What can be more hopeful than that in these difficult times we are living? The Sea Library is the kind of thing that brings people together. And you did such an amazing thing, putting your trust in people. How challenging was it during lockdowns and all this time when not only did you have to think about keeping your library going, but also about the safety of your family?

The Sea Library has remained closed during lockdowns for everyone’s safety. The post became an umbilical cord with readers. We all were locked in our homes with more time to read so the library continued to flourish on a different kind of level. My sister, artist Katrīna Ģelze, drew Sea Library postcards, I printed them and sold them to be able to cover post expenses. It was important for me to be able to send books to people for free (they need to pay only for the returning of the books). Some readers were not only in a lockdown, but also landlocked, so reading about the sea was a way for them to take a deep breath.

”I would love to explore the shore with Rachel Carson,
watch seabirds with Adam Nicolson, swim with Amy Liptrot,
go fishing with Ernest Hemingway, or let Charles Arrowby
to cook me dinner in his damp seaside house with a
sea view in Iris Murdoch’s novel The Sea, The Sea.”

You said you wouldn’t swap your library for a bookstore, but do you have a favourite bookshop?

Well, every bookshop gives me an addictive kick. It doesn’t matter if it is in a shopping mall, on a little cobbled street or maybe it is a museum souvenir shop with just a few art books on the shelves. I will go inside and will become happily lost. I am grateful to anyone who works in the bookselling business. I love second-hand bookshops, too. And wait for a phone call from my postman on mornings to open parcels from online bookshops. I also ‘shop’ for suggestions, exploring photos with bookshelves in them. On Zoom talks I have caught myself with a tilted head reading book spines in the background. But to suggest some, I can highlight Mr Page and also Robert’s Books in Riga. I haven’t visited Shakespeare & Company yet, because I haven’t been to Paris. Maybe that would be my answer in the future.

There are so many great books, but is there one book a sea library must absolutely have?

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. It is a completely crazy book, overflowing, fluid and fun. I admire the language and the modernity of this work. It took me nearly half a year to finish it, but I couldn’t stop afterwards. When I read the last page, I returned to the first one. It is still a ritual for me to read a few pages while I have my morning coffee. Moby Dick is a loop, I don’t think I want to get out of it. And I am afraid I am a little bit like that first character that appears in this book, the poor devil of a Sub-Sub-Librarian, “ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars”. Although he is described as belonging to a hopeless tribe “which no wine in this world will ever warm”, I do love his extracts about whales from all kinds of texts. I am not a sailor or a surfer, and I am a bad swimmer. But I am very good at watergazing and at writing things down. Besides, I can prescribe a wonderful way how to read Moby Dick. Visit mobydickbigread.com, take a chapter per day, preferably after a meal, especially the mouthwatering Chapter 15 about clam and cod chowders. “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul,” goes the first paragraph, “I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” It could be a perfect month to start reading the masterpiece.

Which great adventurer, traveller, travel writer and/or book character would you hypothetically like to go with on a sea journey?

It would be useful to travel for some time with Christopher Columbus’ son Hernando Colón
who collected books all over the world and built his famous ‘universal library’. But I can’t choose just one person! I would love to explore the shore with Rachel Carson, watch seabirds with Adam Nicolson, swim with Amy Liptrot and go fishing with Ernest Hemingway. It would be great to spend a week on Jacques Cousteau’s ship Calypso or dive deep with Sylvia Earle.

There are also plenty of wonderful moments in history that I would love to have seen with my own eyes. For example, when 72-year-old Astrid Lindgren threw her terrible gallstones out of a small tin into the Baltic Sea while singing “Farewell, you stupid gallstone! You’re being left behind!”.

I would also love to leave my bed at night and go for a moonlit walk with Moomintroll to see the sea-horses galloping out of the sea that he desperately fell in love with. They had tiny silver horseshoes and soft gray velvet coats dotted with flowers. Or to let Charles Arrowby to cook me dinner in his damp seaside house with a seaview in Iris Murdoch’s novel The Sea, The Sea. I’m not really a sea-crosser, a conqueror of some sort. I much rather love to observe how the sea gets under one’s skin and doesn’t let you go in oh so many ways. As Iris Murdoch said, “My imagination lives near the sea and under the sea.”

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

”I love promises. Not everything has to be gained.”

You own a 600 title library. But do you have time to read as much as you’d like? How much do you read every day?

I am shy to reveal that I am a slow reader. I have tried to read faster, but it doesn’t work for me at all. With such a collection, it can be tempting to reduce reading to numbers to impress me. But what’s the point to fast-forward if I lose the joy of wallowing on pages like a seal in the sun, making notes on the margins? There are so many things in life that you have to do, let’s not ruin books with obligations. Besides, it takes such a long time to write a book, let’s not rush into reading them. But I read whenever I can. I read in the morning, in the afternoon, early in the evening I spend a few hours with a book and I read aloud to my boys before bed. But each title in the library has spent some time in my hands: I know what it is about, I have read reviews and can suggest it by subject to visitors. Deep down I would love to be like Oscar Wilde who consumed literature with such speed and famously memorised what he had read…

I like that, not rushing into reading a book. Especially that reading a paper book is by definition such an immersive and intentional activity. I think every good book should come with this piece of advice. Do you welcome books in any language? Do you prefer older or more recent editions?

As long as a book is about the watery part of the world, it will find a place in the Sea Library. I have titles on rivers, lakes and ponds, too. Recently I was sent a couple of small booklets from the 1980s about indigenous women from the Pacific islands campaigning around nuclear testing and on threats to the ocean. The oldest is a book on boatbuilding from 1909 and the latest hasn’t been officially published yet.

Right now I have titles in Latvian, English, Russian, German and one book in French. I was promised a book in Swedish and a book in Spanish, but they haven’t arrived yet. But I love promises, they form a separate catalogue in the Sea Library, an imaginary branch. One old sailor once promised me an anchor and a barometer. Not everything has to be gained.

I can’t predict what books will be donated, but I can choose which titles I’ll buy. I try to curate the collection to add diversity. To have more women writers, more translations, more writers of colour. To add stories from different seas and different coasts.

It has been a year now since I started to weave bookmarks (on a handmade loom inspired by Navajo weaving manner with no need to cut any warp yarns when finished). I sell them so I could buy books for young readers. I realised that it is not fair that there are more books for grown-ups than there are for babies, kids and teens. Since last October I have sold more than one hundred bookmarks and bought around one hundred books for young readers. There’s still a long way to go to have an equally large collection, but at the same time, it is impossible to divide so strictly. I have discovered so many wonderful titles for kids that I have gulped down myself, and one teen recently borrowed all books by Hemingway that I had. All boundaries are fluid like water.

I had already noticed you pay great attention to children’s books in your collection and it just warms my heart. I love children’s books and roaming a bookstore with my son for hours on end is one of my greatest joys. He has his favourites and I have mine, and because I love and trust children’s own tastes, I would like to ask which are your boys’ favourite books.

My boys will turn seven and twelve this winter. The eldest adores catastrophes. He has read everything about the faith of Titanic from the Sea Library and loved Robinson Crusoe. Now he is interested in the history of war, and is building his own collection. The youngest is the first critic of all the new picture books that arrive here. We read them together and spend a lot of time exploring the illustrations. There are so many styles of how to draw water! He has a lot of favourites, and not only books on Minecraft. From Moomin adventures to inspiring biographies. He loved Manfish about Jacques Cousteau. Also fun books like It Could Be Worse by Einat Tsarfati, where two shipwrecked sailors experience worst-case scenarios one after another, including a whale with a bad breath and flying fish with a terrible diarreah. I asked him right now, and he reminded me of two books about refugee kids: Story Boat by Kyo Maclear and one recently translated book by Estonian writer Juhani Püttsepp about Baltic families crossing the sea to Sweden in the Second World War. Both emotional stories are written from kids’ point of view and captivate my children.

”I had to free myself of the feeling that there’s never
enough time before I even could start to dream about
anything at all. I had to trick my mind, so I issued myself
a ticket to do nothing for ten years. To not to achieve
anything, to not to rush to the next big job.”

A book is not just words, but everything else that makes a book, from its paper, binding and printing quality, to the illustrations and cover and the beauty for the eye. “The book is a perfect object – it can not be reinvented. Doesn’t this perfection often suffer because of the questionable quality of the paper or because of the bad taste of the cover?,” my bookseller in my favourite local bookshop once told me. Is there any book that is special to you not just because of its storytelling or because it’s a great literary piece, but because it’s visually captivating as well?

Yes, a book is not just words, it is also a perfect object! Exactly. One of my first jobs was working in a small publishing house focusing on art books. I’ve seen how much work and dedication it takes to make each edition. I was a twenty-year-old assistant and helped with everything. I loved to sit in meetings and listen to how designers talk about types of paper and fonts. All these little details make a difference. Hundreds of decisions.

It is hard to choose one book, but I’ll go with The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, published by Graywolf Press. It is part memoir, part history of bookshops and libraries. I read it while dad was recovering and I had started to dream about selling books about the sea by the sea. I noticed it first because of the cover: an artwork by Quint Buchholz – a tower of books with a hurricane lamp on top of it like a bookish lighthouse by the evening sea. Then, of course, the subject of the book made me click the buy button.

This edition is very beautiful: pages have ragged edges and endpapers are bright yellow. They contrast with the blue dusk on the cover as if by opening the book you would come inside from the outside. There is a quote by Vincent Van Gogh as an epigraph: “I think that I still have it in my heart to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening … like a light in the midst of the darkness.”

This book has inspired many booklovers. A bookshop in England – The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop – is even named by it. I remember talking with the author in my mind when I read this book. As readers often do. When the Sea Library was born, it did its magic. We are now friends with Lewis Buzbee, who lives in San Francisco. Together we are writing a book for children now – about books and about the sea.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is soft paperback that perfectly fits in a pocket of a coat. Even these little things are important. It is easy to be carried with you. I carry it with me often.

That truly counts for a special book. And your writing a book for children, how wonderful! Which were your favourite books as a child?

Books by Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson were widely translated and well-read in the Soviet Union. I read worn copies, some of them owned by my mum when she was a little girl. I loved Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, Pippi Longstocking and Moomin books. When I was six, I had a chance to also see a movie about Ronia in a local cinema. It left a huge impression on me. Last winter I read biographies of Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, because I realised I know so much about their creations, but don’t know anything about themselves. Both writers lived by the Baltic Sea and created these wondrous stories, changing the course of children’s literature. The strong girl characters doing whatever they wanted inspired the little me. They were playful, unpredictable and brave. Today I live in an old wooden house like Pippi with a bit neglected garden and have a forest close to home like Ronia. I suppose I now need a spotted horse living in a veranda, a bag full of gold coins, and my life would be fulfilled.

My favourite book as a child was also by a Scandinavian writer, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf. There is just something about Northern children’s books that fascinates the whole world it seems. Is there any downside to your beautiful and simple way of living in a wooden house by the sea?

The to-do list is neverending if you own an old building. It becomes a way of life. We moved in nearly ten years ago just before winter. It was a crazy idea. The house had no heating system back then, just a wood stove in the kitchen. I know it would have been wiser and maybe even more beautiful to renovate and only then to move in – as grown-up people do – but we made the decision on a full moon night. And I am grateful for that. I like this process, however slow: taking care of the house – a patchwork quilt – which has stood here from the beginning of 20th century. It is warm and cosy now and has a Sea Library in it. Besides, I blame this house for changing me. The first couple of years I was still running around the world, working too much, being away from my family. But the house and this place turned me into something of a tree. Spreading roots, watching, growing. Not going anywhere.

To not have a real job is a downside too, of course. But that was my conscious choice. I left a promising career in art journalism. First of all, I wanted to be with my children. They grow up too fast to miss any moment. I know I will never regret that. And I wanted to find another way of leading my life. As long as we manage somehow, I am alright with modesty and forever grateful for the trust and support from my husband and my parents.

There have been suggestions from friends and strangers to turn the Sea Library into some kind of a business idea, but it is a big no-no for me. The Sea Library has to be like flowers, the clouds and the sea, free and fueled by love and generosity. I write and I weave for pocket money and books.

That’s sounds just about right. What does a day usually look like for you?

I wake up at 6 am and have a coffee with milk and Moby Dick. If it’s summer, I cycle to the sea or to the river for a swim. If it’s school (autumn, winter, spring), I wake up my boys at 7 am, kiss the, goodbye at 8 am and only then can immerse myself in water or just gaze from the shore. Back at home, I work for a few hours on my book about my road to the Sea Library.

Around noon I finish chores and start making lunch for boys, who return from school at around 2 pm and then we all go outside: to the forest, to the meadow, riverside or seaside, or just play football in the garden. Later I help them with homework and read for a few more hours. In the evenings I weave. If I have larger orders from bookshops around the world I put other things aside and weave bookmarks most of my time until done.

There are days when I have visitors at the Sea Library. Sometimes, it takes nearly all day to be a librarian. If I am lucky enough, even more days in a row. It inspires me. There are days for the post office and for going to Riga. I answer e-mails whenever I can, and update the Sea Library’s website on weekend mornings.

In summer, our schedule has a tendency to melt in the sun. We just stay at the beach as long as we can or run down to the river one more time just before bed. Water looks purple on warm summer nights and our heads glide through a thin layer of fog. We wrap ourselves in towels and return home through the meadow like a pack of four wolves.

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere

Leading a life in which play and imagination are part of the everyday, working for the good of others and out of love for books instead of commercial success, and finding happiness in it all, I don’t think that’s modest living, quite the opposite, it’s living a fulling and beautiful life. What would your advice be for someone with their own dream?

It is useful to question conventions. The ones we trap ourselves in. Question the way how you think about time or even space, what do you think is important and why? I once was afraid that by burning bridges with the previous field I worked in, I would lose all possible contacts. That by deleting Facebook, I would be forgotten. The world turned out to be much more colourful than that. There’s an Amazonian tribe with no words for numbers. And there are Indigenous Australians who have songlines: they sing the landscape and therefore are able to move from location to location through it, and teach each other by singing.

While weeding your beliefs, there’s common sense and then there’s also common nonsense. For me, this world was spinning too fast, so I jumped out of the train of instant results. I had to free myself of the feeling that there’s never enough time before I even could start to dream about anything at all. I had to trick my mind, so I issued myself a ticket to do nothing for ten years. To not achieve anything, to not rush to the next big job. It was just a trick, of course, but it worked for me. I set myself free. I let myself wander around, I started to hear my own voice again. Seven years have passed till that golden ticket and I have a Sea Library. I don’t know what will come next. We never do. But I do know that I am walking my own path. I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t even have to achieve anything. I just want to create and learn, and to look at the sea as often as I can. There’s always a way.

In Lewis Carroll’s poem The Hunting of the Snark there’s a blank map. All dreamers need one.

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best —
A perfect and absolute blank!”

Website: beachbooks.blog | Instagram: @sealibrary_ and @sealibrary_kids

Photo credit: Anna Iltnere