I’m Not Everything I Want to Be review – sex, fashion and addiction from Czech Nan Goldin

Libuše Jarcovjáková narrates her own life story from career obscurity to capturing the Prague underground and the fall of the Berlin Wall

It’s likely that not too many people will have heard of photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, but plenty of poseurs will pretend they were always fans after they see this. As it happens, the film makes it pretty clear that she wasn’t that well-known outside cognoscenti circles until a major 2019 show in Arles won rave reviews; the struggle with obscurity, her refusal to give up, is one of the things that makes her such a winning subject here. That, and her gruff, deadpan voice which narrates this autobiographical reflection, told entirely through her photography, spiced up with a cannily deployed soundtrack of Foley noises and music, along with some nimble editing.

Unfurled in unfussy chronological order, the film recounts how Jarcovjáková was born to a pair of artists who struggled themselves to establish their reputations in post-second world war Prague where only the most socialist survived. From a young age, she wanted to be a photographer, but her applications to the equivalent of art school were repeatedly rejected as she didn’t have the right kind of proletariat background. Around the time Russian tanks were occupying Prague in 1968, she was working in a print works where she took striking shots of her co-workers, often asleep or drunk on the job. There was a husband and other lovers who came and went, a couple of abortions, and an unfeasible bit of luck that saw her travelling to Japan where she found crucial career supporters, and then a return to Prague where she drifted into the city’s underground queer scene.

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