Podcasts Culture The Essay The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others

Published: June 23, 2022, 6 a.m.

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Joanna Robertson believes it's the everyday moments that shape, frame and colour our lives. That includes observing, or imagining, the lives of others around us.

Are portraitists creating a mere image, or capturing the authentic selves of their subjects? The celebrated Belle Epoque painter Giovanni Boldini became a darling of Parisian society with his glamorous portrayals of society women, but a spontaneous portrait of a wealthy couple's gardener in eastern France, possibly painted for Boldini's own eyes only, inside the lid of his paintbox, gloriously reveals the gardener's inner life.

And what about the people we meet or see ourselves? Take the new neighbours who moved into a flat opposite. Their daily rituals, from their apparently perfect breakfast to their equally apparently perfect dinner, with all five regulation courses, every night, all seen through the windows. Why is observing them, with the resulting questioning of Joanna's own habits, such a vivid part of her and her daughters' daily life?

And then Joanna actually meets the family. How do they compare to their imagined selves?

Written and presented by Joanna Robertson\\nProducer: Arlene Gregorius\\nEditor: Penny Murphy\\nSound engineer: Nigel Appleton\\nProduction Coordinator: Janet Staples

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