Elfie Semotan

In Canadian-born John Cook’s restless documentary of an Austrian couple, I JUST CAN’T GO ON, the husband Petrus, channeling “Cassius Marcellus Clay,” takes up boxing to supplement the income from his day-job burnishing frames. His companion, the much older Gisi, works as a janitor. They are an odd couple, scavenging at the bottom of the Viennese social ladder. But there is nothing patronizing or exploitative in Cook’s treatment of the couple and their eccentricities as they try to make ends meet. In one of the film’s key aesthetic choices, Cook eschews synched sound in favor of a stream-of-consciousness soundtrack pitting Petrus and Gisi’s unfiltered remarks in relief against the harsh material world.

Since the 1980s, Elfie Semotan, born in Upper Austria, has been one of the most sought-after and also idiosyncratic fashion photographers in the world. For more than half a century the now 77-year-old Semotan has been successful at the intersection between art, fashion and commercial photography, with many of her sophisticated arrangements having become legendary. Semotan's sometimes controversial oeuvre is characterized by her strong personality and a continuous opposition to anything mainstream. Elfie Semotan, Photographer is an hommage not only to a great artist but also to the passion of photography itself.