When Life Ends at 45

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

Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: Slovene Ethnographic Museum