Meta Krese's photographs appear in pairs. Stacked shelves in shoe stores on one side and, on the other, an empty factory hall that has become a junk-yard of dusty machines and boxes, falling apart and revealing their insides: these rags soaked by rain and dragged around by cats were once metres upon metres of cloth, which was turned to clothes under the hands of dress makers. Shirts, hundreds of shirts, waiting for buyers on the one side, while on the other, empty hands used to sew but are now idle, not because there's a break, but because there is no more work for them.
Mete Krese's photographs tell stories of things that are absent: that the women in the pictures used to have work they could curse on a "bad" morning; that life used to flow along without any immoderate expectations, but also without humiliations, that these women were spared the great questions of existence and existentiality. How better to show the former plenitude if not by the present solitude? How better to show the former liveliness of women's voices and whirr of machines, if not through an empty factory yard, overgrown with grass.
Meta Krese's photographs speak of appearance and reality. The reality is today's liberal market economy; the appearance is a carefully ironed tablecloth-maybe a sign that, despite everything, these women haven't given up. The reality is that workers-women-are laid off; the appearance is the ritual of having coffee, repeated over and over, to show that life goes on. The reality is despair; the appearance is a flower, wrapped in cellophane, on a table, potted plants in the window, snow-white curtains. Oh, these tidy kitchens!
Some might think that the women in these photographs are dreaming the world upside down: reality is appearance and appearance is reality. But a sign in one of the photographs turns the upside-down world back onto real ground: LONG LIVE CAPITALISM AND EXPLOITATION!
Zoja Skušek
