The Lives of Others
Joanna Robertson celebrates the minutiae of our day-to-day, with acute observations and imaginings of the lives of others, from people painted by artists, to her new neighbours.
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
Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Editor: Penny Murphy
Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton
Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
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- Thu 23 Jun 2022 22:45成人快手 Radio 3
- Thu 29 Feb 2024 22:45成人快手 Radio 3
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