院子 (2009)

‘Podwórka’ captures six groups of neighbourhood youth as they play in seemingly deserted yards, offering an intimate portrait of daily life in Lód´z, Poland. Shot with a fixed camera, this single-channel video projection highlights American artist Sharon Lockhart’s concern for the interrelationship between the still and the moving image.
Evolving from past works for which Lockhart has entered into a community to document its inhabitants—such as Pine Flat (2006), the result of three years spent in a small town in the Sierra Nevada—Podwórka evidences the artist’s nuanced anthropological gaze as she represents both individual and collective identities. The work’s meditative pace and absence of defined narrative affords Lockhart’s subjects a sense of freedom that also extends to the viewers, who are encouraged to imagine stories for the children portrayed, beyond the space of the screen.