Taken between 1979 and 1984, in the years before his death from a cancer supposedly contracted on the set of Stalker, these polaroids span Tarkovsky's last months in the Soviet Union and the years hespent researching and filming in Italy. Very much in the spirit of his moving image work, they capture nature, individuals and light in images that shine with the singular humanity which imbues his films. He once pronounced that “the director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen…”
'At my wedding in Moscow in 1977, Tarkovsky had a Polaroid camera in his hand and he moved about happily with this instrument which he discovered only recently. He and Michelangelo Antonioni were my witnesses at the wedding, and as the custom then, it fell to them to choose the music for the band to play when the time came to sign the marriage certificate. The chose The Blue Danube.
Antonioni, too, made great use of a Polaroid at the time, and I remember that during a reconnaissance in Uzbekistan for a film that in the end we never made, he wanted to give three elderly Muslims a photograph he had taken of them. The eldest, after casting a brief glance at the image, gave it back to him, saying: ‘Why stop time?’ We were left gaping in wonder, speechless at this extraordinary refusal.
Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and this is precisely what he wanted: to stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots. The melancholy of seeing things for the last time is the highly mysterious and poetic essence that these images leave with us. It is as though Andrei wanted to transmit his own enjoyment quickly to others. And they feel like a fond farewell.' Tonino Guerra from the introduction to Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids