on tiptoe – photo haibun

2 reviews!
Brigitte ten Brink writes:
Photo Haibun – what should you imagine by that? Is the text in the photo, in the image, like in a photo haiku or a haiga? Not at all! Gabriele Hartmann invents a new method of composition and arranges photos, haibuns and haiku in a very special way. She extracts the haiku from the haiga and combines the image and the extracted haiku with a haibun, which, as is well known, consists of a short prose text and a haiku.

These three components are interrelated. Each can be combined with each other, but can also exist independently and on their own.

The images, alienated by Gabriele Hartmann and greatly reduced in color, are alternately located on the left and right pages of the book. The texts are on the other side. First the haibun and at the end of this page the haiku that was detached from the picture, and once a tanka as well.

Basically, they are everyday stories that Gabriele Hartmann tells in her impressive linguistic way. Not a word is said too much. It is precisely these words that are needed for this moment captured by her, so that the full scope of the event can develop.

strong

The door is open. A painted sign shimmers in the half-dark hallway: "Together we are strong." Children's laughter sounds from the overgrown garden.
Someone knows behind closed doors: "The women's shelter!"

twelve beats
near the church
an RKW

Mother's hymnal picked up the Song of Songs of Love

Quiet, delicate and light, as if on tiptoe, this book comes along the first moment you leaf through and look at it, only to then develop a power when looking at and reading that captivates - magically.

and always
is there a hand
that (s)leads

With this haiku, Gabriele Hartmann concludes her afterword on the last page of the book.

***

and Rüdiger Jung writes:

The booklet (14,8 x 14,8 cm) with its 28 pages, 12 photos, 12 haibun is a gem. In her own afterword, the author writes:

“What is in the foreground: photo? haiku? Haibun?
I have separated the components of my haiga – consisting of photo and haiku – and combined these individual parts with haibun – which are composed of short prose and haiku – and now everyday events unfold into snapshots that are not at all everyday. The photos appear reduced in color and expression, alienated and yet, with light and shadow, remind us of what moves us.”

Apart from the red of the title photo, which dominates the outside (and mirrored “inverted” the adjacent inside) pages and reminds of life and vulnerability at the same time, the photographic works are reproduced in black and white. The eye perceives graceful structures that evoke a basic impression of fragile beauty and vulnerable preciousness. Haiku take up this basic feeling

final destination
the last wagon
disconnected

Anniversary still nobody can fill the emptiness

For me, the haibun “Waldes-Ruh”, the tanka “the first snow” and the photo on the opposite page harmonize particularly well.

forest rest

I tiptoe from tree to tree. The numbers attached mean whose urn was buried in which direction.

Wasn't there a woodpecker?

the first snow
I wanted to paint - but again
is on my sheet
only the way
that you left

“Urne” and “bebury” very quietly locate the reality of the Friedwald in the “Waldes-Ruh”. The Tanka that follows touches on the attempt to "paint" nature (more precisely: "the first snow") and in doing so does not get beyond one's own feeling of farewell (more precisely of being abandoned, being left behind). "Leaving" remains open - between
the intentional active step in life and an imagery for death.

Declaring the warning level "melancholy" would nevertheless be premature. Because death has an opponent: love!

also on this trip
I lean my head now and then
to your shoulder

our ark we brave waves and storms

Finally, I would like to draw our attention to a haiku that is not only very touching, but also very cleverly designed and full of ambivalence

Mother's hymnal picked up the Song of Songs of Love

Ambivalence and sophistication are particularly important to me in the central word "trimmed". Taken by itself as an external expression of wear and tear, wear and tear certainly has a negative connotation. As an expression of intensive, loving use, on the other hand, it has been emphatically rehabilitated.

"Mother's Bible" would have allowed two interpretations: the Old Testament "Hohe Lied der
Love” as an erotic text sui generis that has been reinterpreted spiritually. Or the song of love of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. The latter also occurs in the EKG in the form of a song in the EKG that preceded it: "A true faith stills God's wrath". If you like, the "reading" for the "hymnal"!

***