Good Luck with the Future
By Janelle Lynch
Published by photo-eye
March 2018
Book by Dani Pujalte and Rita Puig-Serra
Self-published, Barcelona, Spain, 2017
Good Luck with the Future begins with a black and white image of a light cone on an iPhone screen. While a light cone is a Special and General Relativity construct that depicts how light travels in space and time, the images and text that follow are not ultimately rooted in Einstein’s theories, rather, firmly in the human condition.
Rita Puig-Serra Costa and Dani Pujalte’s photographic project began in 2014 and took them from the home they shared in Barcelona on a multinational journey ostensibly to confront their anxiety about the future and to discover how uncertainty is felt in other places around the world. That seems like an inexhaustible project, particularly in these harrowing times. But their interest wasn't sociopolitical, it was deeply personal, though, nonetheless, relevant to now. As was what they learned while making the portraits, still lives, land, sea, and skyscapes that make up Good Luck with the Future: the value of being present—of paying attention to what is happening in the moment instead of plagued by preoccupation about an unknowable future.
Self-published in 2017 and designed by Affaire Projects, the Barcelona-based design studio, Good Luck with the Future’s shiny black soft bound cover suggests undefined space and simultaneously functions as a reflective surface. Hold it up and you will see your likeness. The 58 color and black and white photographs are laid out in single and double page spreads and categorized by references to the light cone’s depictions of time: Absolute Past, Relative Past, Here, And Now, Relative Future, and Absolute Future. The artists used the moon “as a narrative tool, to add rhythm and connect the different parts of the book.” It also supports their yearning for certainty. Despite its mystery, it reliably rises.
In the first section, “Absolute Past,” an image of Shanghai’s Inner Ring Road shows an elevated expressway loop that connects to a bridge over the Huangpu River. The implied movement of traffic coupled with the graphic architectural elements and the aerial vantage are vertiginous. In contrast, “Rita, Delta de L’Ebre,” depicts the photographer standing, arms draped, dressed in cutoffs and a pink tee shirt in front of Catalonia’s waterway, the wind blowing her long brown hair. With her eyes closed and lips slightly parted, she appears to be willing calm. Another image shows a concrete pillar foundation against a silhouetted palm tree backdrop one Indonesian dawn. The darkness of the foreground and hazy magenta sky confuse the reading of the image: is it an abandoned or in-progress site?
The following five sections continue the book’s—and photographic—motifs of movement, space, and time, using varied and often surprising representations, including suggestions of the contrary forces. In Relative Past, there is “Butterfly,” a black and white still life of the insect enclosed in glass from the Indonesian island of Java. “Air Tokyo,” shows an abstract image of red and yellow lines—perhaps string—against blackness. With one exception, they are all taught, though what anchors them is not revealed. On the prior page is “Coin no. 1, Berlin,” which shows a flash-lit forearm and hand a second before it flips a coin. In Relative Future, the wish to freeze time—and sentiment—is suggested by two images of the sculpture “The Kiss,” apparently referencing Rodin’s masterpiece in Shenzhen, China, and in two images of icicles dangling from a roof’s edge against a sunny blue Spanish sky.
The journal entries in Catalan and English at the end of the book chronicle both the physical and physic terrain that the photographers traverse. The diaristic details about the dissolution—and transformation—of their romantic relationship confuse the book’s overt thematic structure and would risk its sophistication if the pictures themselves weren’t so intriguing. A list of plates with image titles and page numbers precedes the entries.
Puig-Serra Costa and Pujalte were awarded the prestigious FotoPres grant sponsored by the Spanish bank la Caixa for the publication and exhibition of Good Luck with the Future. The images are currently on view at CaixaForum, the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Madrid venue, and were exhibited at the CaixaForum Barcelona in 2017.