Through a Lens Darkly

This is a book with Bergman which creates a stage for a dialog between three generations, three different cultures and three different points of view which has as its center a rapport between the image, the word and human existence. Ingmar Bergman, Jill Mathis and Roberto Mastroianni come together on a delimited ground from the image and the word and from this propitious encounter is born an artistic-philosophical dialog. The existential value, one could say religious, of the images inspired by the Bergmanian poetic becomes the playing field for this photographic/ artistic research, and at the same time, it is a tribute to the life and times of the great director, writer and Swedish playwright, Bergman. The book is, in fact, the result of an artistic etymological/philosophical and photographic research on the places and the Bergman poetic. Jill Mathis created the photographs around the evocative words found in Bergman productions based on the dialog between Bergman and Mastroianni (i.e. Persona, Alone, Religion, Whisper, Desire, Seal, Confession, Forgiveness, Grace.). The Swedish spaces where Bergman lived and filmed (Uppsala, Stockholm, the island of Fårö), the themes and the Bergmanian words are seen as such and recounted Through a lens darkly, which is 'Through a glass darkly' expanding the evocative power of the worlds and the Bergmanian images.

Jill Mathis is from San Antonio, Texas. After living in New York City for five years, four of which were spent as the full-time assistant to Ralph Gibson, she moved to Italy. This is not the first time she has entered in a dialog with another artist. At the moment she is now producing an extensive body of work based on etymology. Jill exhibits regularly in both Europe and America and her work can be found in many public and private collections, including Whitney Museum, The International Center of Photography of New York and of the Norton Museum of Art of Palm Beach, Brooklyn Museum, Columbia University, George Washington University.