The Photograph and the Monk or the Monk and the Photograph
Preamble to the Probe
On Stories
Everything in life can be told as a story. We live our lives serving willingly or unwillingly as protagonists of our and others’ stories, unbeknownst to us that even in the most mundane of acts, such as drinking our morning coffee, for example, we are passive or active participants, in various degrees and forms, in endless stories, tales, the totality of which we like to call life. And since I have mentioned drinking one’s morning coffee as an example, in the drinking of it we partake in writing the story of the cup which holds the coffee, of the coffee beans that were needed to produce it, of the water that was used to brew it, of the sugar that sweetened it, and of the money which officiated the transaction permitting the transfer of ownership of the coffee from the one who produced it to the one drinking it. Everything can be seen as part of an infinite number of clusters of stories, simultaneously being written, told, noticed or unknown to us for lack of interest or ability to simply observe, know and understand everything.
This interconnection between the human and the non-human, explained convincingly by the actor-network theory[1], is the focus of my present probe. Unlike other writings I have done thus far, in this one, I explore the power of nonhuman agency[2] to affect change, seeing the human and the non-human as both alive, crafting each other’s fate.
The title of my story is ‘The photograph and the monk or the monk and the photograph.’ I want to ensure that at no time the human becomes this story’s main character. But even this title does not do justice, as what I am about to tell is not just about a photograph and its owner. Ultimately, it is about power and about adjustments or resistance to power, about what the French thinker Michel de Certeau called “strategy” and “tactics.”[3] Lastly, my story is about practices[4] concerning the handling of an object—a photograph—and how its meaning evolves as a result of changes of its circumstances over time. It is my hope that it, this story, sheds light on the intricate nature of life, any life, of humans and non-humans, all co-participants in never-ending tales.
The Probe: The Photograph and the Monk or the Monk and the Photograph
Questions
I approach the idea of writing about the photograph above with several key questions in mind: how closely related is the meaning of a given object to its medium or environment? If it has multiple meanings, is there one that overshadows the rest? In other words, does a simple wallet-sized photograph like the one presented here undergo metamorphosis and, if it does, and it becomes something else, can it ever return to its original state of being solely a photograph? Or, does it carry behind its story— the various meanings it accumulated over time?
The photograph and I, Bucharest 2014: surprise and excitement
To attempt to answer these questions, I must being my own story: It all began in Bucharest, Romania, in 2014, in one sunny May day spent at the Council for the Securitate Archives (ANCSAS), the institution which now handles the archives of the secrete police (Securitate in Romanian) files from Romania’s communist era (1945-89). On that day, I was examining my great-uncle Securitate files from the late 1940s until mid 1960s. His name was Antonie Plamadeala and the time mentioned here, he was a Christian Orthodox monk. The files were about Securitate’s surveillance of Plamadeala in 1940s-1950s, his incarceration years as a political prisoner (1954-1956) and Securitate’s surveillance of Plamadeala after his release from prison.
Going through thirteen dossiers pertaining to him, roughly 2000 pages, mostly typed but a few hand written, was not an easy task. Reading these dossiers requires patience and a great deal of intuition in discerning truth from lies, facts from misleading information aiming to camouflage truth. For example, a document confirming one’s death from tuberculosis may have meant, in reality, that the person the document is concerned with died as a result of physical torture received during prison interrogations. On that specific day, I stumbled upon several documents alluding to some degree of torture. Needless to explain, my own experience with the files was filled with emotions of my own. However, when I saw this photograph, carefully placed in of these dossiers, I was taken by surprise. True, at first this picture may look troublesome. Entitled Nebunul (the Crazy Man), it represents a man in a huge pile of human bones. He is raising an undecipherable item, in a somewhat victorious pose. There is, however, something powerful about this picture. At least to me, it seems to convey a sense of tenacity, ability to endure, to persevere, to go on against all odds. On the back of this photograph, one can see my uncle’s handwriting: Passini pe un morman de cadavre (Passini on a pile of cadavers), signed with his first name Leonida, the name he had prior to his becoming a monk in 1949, and dated as April 1948, Bucharest. Seeing this photograph for the first time brought me back to my first perusal of Plato’s Republic and my introduction to his allegory of the cave. This man, in the photograph, was not crazy at all, I concluded. He simply refused to succumb to darkness. His refusal to accept his status quo was perceived as madness.
But there is more to this photography than my sense of excitement with it. Who was I to define it? A mere observer, overwhelmed by the immensity of information in those files and excited to find something unusual in them? And so I wondered what others saw in it? For that, I went back in time, back to April 1948.
The Photograph and the Monk, Romania 1940s: hope
It is safe to assume that my uncle was once the possessor of this photograph, as it was confiscated by Securitate from his room, sometimes in the 1950s, after his release from prison. About this, I elaborate at greater length in the next section. Now, however, I intend to explore my uncle’s relationship with this photograph in the 1940s. For that, I must call upon historical accounts to uncover the truth. What was happening in April 1948 in Bucharest? And more importantly, what was taking place in Plamadeala’s life in that month? The latter question is more difficult to answer, given the mystery that surrounds any human life and the impossibility to articulate fully in words about one’s state of existence, tangible and intangible, the latter being defined by one’s thoughts, emotions, hopes and aspirations.
By April 1948, only four months had passed from the establishment of the communist regime in Romania. This war-torn country was at that time facing dramatic socio-economic and political changes as a result of the coming in power of the Communist Party. Anyone involved in anti-communist resistance was being arrested or hunted by Securitate. The Orthodox Church was among the government’s main targets; the youth was as well, as its restlessness, idealism, courage and audacity to think that it can change life for the better are always menacing to dictatorial regimes.
My uncle happened to have embodied all that: in April 1948, he was young (22 years old), a theology student, and a fervent anti-communist, having served as an editor and writer of a clandestine newspaper (Ecoul Basarabiei/The Echo of Bessarabia), that encouraged its readers to fight for the liberation of a former Romanian region (Bessarabia) from the Soviet occupation. Having been born in Bessarabia, the involvement in the writing of this newspaper was rather personal for Plamadeala.
In April 1948, Plamadeala was on the run from the Securitate seeking to arrest him for his involvement in the anti-communist resistance. By then, he was hiding in various monasteries, churches, and basements of friends’ houses. One can only imagine what was life like for him at that time. This picture, however, may give us a hint of the tenacity of this young man who was refusing to surrender to the communist secret police. This photograph, I think, may have served for Plamadeala as constant reminder to not lose hope.
The Photograph and the Securitate, Romania 1950s: intimidation
After six years on the run from the Securitate, Plamadeala was eventually arrested and imprisoned at Jilava prison in October of 1954. He would remain incarcerated there for two years and released in April of 1956. Shortly after, he was defrocked, stripped of his academic credentials, and ostracized from society, left in the mercy of his family on the streets of Bucharest. In the late 1950s-early 1960s, he was employed as an unqualified worker in a plant in the suburbs of Bucharest. It was around this time that this picture was confiscated by a Securitate officer and placed in Plamadeala’s dossier.
This picture came to Securitate’s attention most likely for its relation to Plamadeala’s writings. By then, the Securitate knew from its informers that he was writing at nights, after his day-time work in the plant, a novel which intended to criticize harshly dictatorial regimes and the way human beings are psychologically affected by the lack of freedom such a regime installs in the people it governs. Any nuanced reader would have seen the manuscript’s connection to the events taking place in Romania at that time.
Writing may have been an expression of resistance for Plamadeala, resistance via nonviolence. In the end, Plamadeala concluded that even this method of resistance may be powerless, as he wrote the following in the final chapters of his manuscript: “what can, let’s say, the unarmed Kant do while facing a hungry lion?”[5] Still, the “unarmed Kant” in Plamadeala felt somewhat hopeful that eventually his voice and story would be heard. This one learns from a Securitate report written on him, where agent “Grigorescu Marin,” a false name of a then pretended friend of Plamadeala who was secretly spying on him, wrote that Plamadeala hoped the manuscript “would be a novel of the era.”[6]
As Plamadeala hoped, his manuscript did eventually turn into a novel, and a great one. Trei Ceasuri in Iad (Three Hours in Hell), for its literary eloquence, depth and simplicity, became one of Plamadeala’s most known works. This book describes people who suffer from some form or another of depersonalization, manifested by their inability and fear to express overtly what they think and feel within— a crisis of the soul, of one’s essence. Incidentally, the only character of the book who does exercise his freedom of expression and is not punished by the police and society is Karl, deemed by the rest as demented or crazy for his eccentricity. It is very possible, therefore, that the Securitate confiscated this photograph because of its link to the writing of this manuscript. By confiscating it, the secrete police was probably attempting to install fear in Plamadeala and intimidate him from writing his book.
The Photograph and ACNSAS now: relic from the past
Years have passed. Communism fell in Romania as it fell in the rest of the former Soviet bloc. And yet, its presence is still felt; the residue of this country’s communist past is still noticeable and pondered upon by many, including myself. The photograph is no longer a symbol of hope, resistance, or an instrument of intimidation. It is a relic from the past, a reminder of how life was for others, an item which we now can call an ‘element of history’, helpful in writing history down in decipherable words.
The Photograph and our course, Montreal 2015: object of reflection
But what does this photograph mean in this very moment? To me, it is an object of reflection. I still am trying to decipher its meaning. Who was Passini, the man mentioned in the back of this photograph? Who wrote the title of this photograph—Nebunul? And who wrote the lower two inscriptions, which seem to be written in a cryptic format, backwards: MUAR/INISSAP RODIROLF. There is a great deal of mystery attached to this photograph, which story somehow managed to involve me, my computer employed to write it, and, now, our course. Everything in life can be written as a story… Is writing a story a story in itself?
References
ACNSAS, fond operativ, dossier 1015, p. 80 (the photograph).
[1] John Law. “Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering Strategy and Heterogeneity,” in Systems Practice, 5 (1992), 379-93.
[2] This concept is employed in light of the article written by Andrew Pickering. “The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergency in the Sociology of Science” in The American Journal of Sociology, 99 (3), 559-589.
[3] These concepts are employed in light of the article written by Michel De Certeau. “On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life.” Social Text 3 (1980), 3-43.
[4] This concept is employed in light of the article of Helga Wild. “Practice and the Theory of Practice. Rereading Certeau’s ‘Practice of Everyday Life’” in JBA Review Essay (2012): 1-19.
[5] Antonie Plamadeala, Trei Ceasuri in Iad [Three Hours in Hell] (Bucharest, Editura Sophia, 2013), 9.
[6] Ibid, 8.
