Photographic Way of Looking

The fever of mosaics

2012-01-08T22:05:00.003+01:00

Living in Italy as an art historian is extremely difficult. You see to much, you have still so much to visit, to study, to read. You can never cope with the quantity of historical and visual material that attacks you every day.

The biggest problem is that when you leave Italy and you go somewhere else you find any other place boring: there are no exhibitions of Italian Masters, there are no medieval churches at every corner, and there are no historical cities every 20 km. What you can do with you free time in this kind of places?

So, as I do not know how long my Italian stop will last, I try to visit as much as possible till I am here. When I do not work and when I can put a part my books for a day or two I take a train and I go to see something that I have been only reading about before.

It was like this with Ravenna. In April last year I went there to see THE mosaics.

I studied them during art history course so I though: OK, it will be nice, but I know what I should expect.

No bigger mistake!

Ravenna is a true treasure. Anything you read about the mosaics there can give you even a minimal idea of what you can see when you visit San Vitale, Mausoleo di Galla Placidia, Sant'Apollinare in Classe, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo or the Arian Baptistry. Colours, patterns, light surround you, flood you with their power.

Maybe it is because of the mosaics that I remember Ravenna as a city full of light.

Unfortunately I could not take pictures everywhere. In some churches it was to dark to take photos without a tripod and I was not allowed to use one.

But I did some pictures that I can share with you.

In Ravenna I had with me my 35mm camera with a black and white film. You will not see the colours of the mosaics but, thanks to the lack of colour on the photos, it is possible to notice other characteristic of mosaics: patterns. Mosaics are like carpets, they extend themselves over every surface: arches, walls, vaults. They spill over without showing any structural difference between elements that they decorate.

Beside figural representation they are full of floral and geometric ornaments that are repeated and repeated over and over.

When you look at them longer you risk a vertigo.

I found this decorative patterns so fascinating also because the pattern attracted also Renaissance public and artists. It is enough to mention the revival of the Cosmatesque floors or the relations between painting and the production of textiles and textiles patterns reproduced on Renaissance paintings.

Decorative fever, the fever of mosaics:

Mosaics in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna 2011.

Le Cure

2012-01-05T09:01:00.001+01:00

I was always asking myself if my love to graffiti depends on fact that I study monumental frescoes. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the fact is that I love graffiti. All these funny monsters, impossible creatures, funny stories - I like it. That is why I was so happy when I discovered the underground passage in the Cure district in Florence. I was amazed by this incredible net of corridors with walls all covered by funny images and colorful writings. I new that I have to photograph it and I did. Here are some of the results:

Le Cure, Firenze 2011.

York

2011-12-31T16:29:00.000+01:00

Life of a PhD student can be a little bit annoying from time to time. You spend all day in the library, 7 days a week, you read and you write, then you read and you write... you go for a coffee break or for a lunch, but then you go back to the library and you read and you write, you read and you write. And then you meet a friend and he asks you: how is your research going? And you want to kill him because you really can not think any more about your research and your thesis. You are always unsatisfied of your work. What you write never seems perfect to you, you want it better and better, different, more interesting. You are always so slow in writing and they ask you: how many words did you write today?

When the frustration is to big you have to take a day off, do something different. You do not want to think about reading and writing and reading and writing, about counting words and about your supervisor who tells you that you have to work harder.

You have to take a break.

After the first stressful period in Durham I took a break, I went with Lorenzo, Giulio and his friend Gabriele to York. I took my camera because for me taking pictures is the best way to relax myself. Guys were looking at it with jealousy.

We had fun. We were wondering around the city, I took some pictures, guys took pictures of me taking picutres.

It was on Sunday so we went also for a compulsory Sunday roast. We visited a very interesting exhibition at York Art Gallery: William Etty: Art and Controversy. I think we will never forget it...

It was a perfect break! On our way back we were almost missing the library, our books and thesis.

York, 2011.

Ruins

2011-12-25T00:11:00.001+01:00

Every revival in visual arts starts with the cult of ruins.
Ruins are physical remains, traces of the past, tangible proofs of others activity. That is why they seam so concrete and real. At the same time every ruin contains a lack. It is never complete, full. Thanks to this lack a ruin is open to one's imagination, interpretation. It invites to write its history, to build a discourse around it.
Ruin has to be completed by somebody's creativity, it has to be actualized by it.
This is also why revivals are never repetition of the past. Renaissance art is different than ancient art, Gothic revival in England did not bring to the Middle Ages once again.

There is something fascinating in a ruin. It is so easy to mythologize it, to describe it attributing to the past all the qualities that we fell missing in our present reality.

Looking at the English ruins I was thinking about romantic poets, writers and artists who were wondering between those rocks and dreaming about the return to social solidarity of Middle Ages, about the mystery of Gothic cathedrals and the beauty of true faith.

Poetry of a ruin, York 2011.

Stuttgart

2011-12-21T16:22:00.001+01:00

During the summer I went to Stuttgart to visit my dear friend Rabea.
Me and Rabea we met in Florence during an internship. It was this kind of friendship that started after the very first talk... I remember that we went for a coffee on one of the very first days at work, we started to chat and it was it, we were there... I just thought: I like her.
Thanks to Rabea I have understood how much Polish and German cultures are similar. I remember when she invited me once for breakfast... I entered her kitchen, I saw all these cheeses, ham, eggs, bread and BUTTER and I thought - HOME! Just tell me, how long could manage to eat brioches and cookies for breakfast every morning?
So during next 4 months we were a strange German-Polish couple between our Italian friends. We were perfectly understanding our jokes (since I live abroad I have understood that sense of humor is totally cultural thing), we had our similar, strange food attitudes and so on.
Unfortunately Rabi left Florence and turned back to Germany. And so I am having my brioches and my cookies for breakfast once again...
I went to visit her in August. I have spent a wonderful weekend between Stuttgart, Tuebingen and Heidelberg.
In Stuttgart I visited the Kunstmuseum with its significant collection of Otto Dix's paintings.
I really liked the square in front of the building also because it is dominated by a Calder's sculpture.

Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart 2011.

Art and the city, Stuttgart 2011.

Street art

2011-12-20T21:46:00.001+01:00

Many times walks in Oltrarno can surprise...

Street Art, Firenze 2011.

Lungarni

2011-12-20T10:38:00.001+01:00

Siena grew thanks to Via Francigena, the main medieval road that was used by pilgrims on their way to Rome. Pisa had the sea and its port while the heart of Florence was (and still is) the Arno river. It was the Arno that made possible the development of the textile industry and the trade so the river made Florence possible.

There is something magical in this river. Very often I just go for a walk along the river: from Cascine park, to the Ponte Vecchio, then San Niccolo' and back. The sound of the water settles me down, it makes me happy and calm. Lungarni, the streets along the river, are probably the most beautiful streets in the city.

View on Ponte alla Carraia and Lungarno Corsini, Firenze 2011.

My and my scanner reunited... Blog's revival!

2011-12-20T00:07:00.002+01:00

After a long break (too long) I am back!
I am in Warsaw for Christmas and that means that I can finally scan my negatives!
The good news of 2011 is that during the summer I bought myself a wonderful Mamiya RZ67 and now I am scanning all my new photos made with this wonderful camera.
As this year I have lived in and I have visited few different places so... I brought some pictures that I can share with you.
I should start with showing you a place that took my heart and obsessed my brain, that infiltrated itself in my life and do not want to let me go... against any logic and any rational explanation.
It is obviously Florence with its art and its history.
I love to wonder through its streets and read the history from the buildings, bricks, facades of palaces and churches, try to figure out the names of the families whose coats of arms are exposed on them. And I like to picture her.

So today for you Piazza del Limbo with the church of Santi Apostoli:

Piazza del Limbo, Firenze, 2011.

Triangular Solid with Circular Inserts

2011-01-19T22:16:00.001+01:00

Art is illusion [Dan Graham Triangular Solid with Circular Inserts, 1989], Venice 2010.

in blue

2010-12-27T00:10:00.003+01:00

It was a cold, winter day.
Me and my friends we woke up early to photograph the sunrise upon the Vistula river near Warsaw.
It was so cold that our fingers were freezing while we were pushing the shutters.
We arrived at the river.
There was no sunrise there.. The sun was rising over a hill...
We were surprised but we found other subjects quickly ...

MA-WAR-3703A

First light

2010-12-25T12:47:00.001+01:00

Geometrical compositions [First light by Anthony Caro], Venezia 2010.

a see

2010-12-23T18:09:00.003+01:00

...morze... może..., Trieste 2010.

First anniversary of my photoblog!

2010-12-22T17:49:00.001+01:00

Exactly one year ago I posted here my first photo!
In this year on my photoblog appeared 33 posts. It was visited 592 times by 377 users from 6 continents, speaking 10 languages.
Thank you!!!!
I hope you enjoy my pictures.
I really hope to have more technical possibilities of digitalization of my archive in the future to make this place more vivid and more active.
We will see how it will develop!
Feel free to leave your comments here. I will really appreciate them!

The anniversary photo.. still form the PGC sculpture garden:

Three Standing Figures by Henry Moore, Venezia 2010.

Palazzo Corner and Canal Grande

2010-12-20T14:32:00.003+01:00

Ca' Corner (Jacopo Sansovino), Venezia 2010.

Canal Grande, Venezia 2010.

Kapoor in black and white

2010-12-19T22:19:00.001+01:00

Art creates illusions, it moves our imagination, allow us to think the world in a different way, to imagine 1000392 possible realities, everything up side down and right side left.
Art gives us life.

Kapoor's sculpture in the PGC is very similar to the optical reliefs and "neutricons" by Jerzy Rosołowicz, a Polish conceptual artist who, as Kapoor, was trying to show different ways of seeing and thinking the reality. He created the idea of an "neutral action" - an activity that don't bring any profit and seems pointless but that allow us to run away from schemes and to avoid social conflicts. Just like his utensil for catching drew (http://csw.art.pl/new/99/kon2_polite.html)

Here, for you, Kapoor in black and white:

Up side down, right side left, Venezia 2010.

un angelo

2010-12-19T21:29:00.001+01:00

Sculpture and photography are very similar... they are both designed by the light...

Angelo della città di Marino Marini, Venezia 2010.

memories...

2010-11-07T21:52:00.001+01:00

I miss that Mamiya that I had in Paris...

Send me a postcard from... , Paris 2009.

log time ago... II

2010-11-07T21:29:00.002+01:00

time has different dimentions...
today
yesterday
in June
one year ago
100 years ago

what's the difference?

The past deposits in us...
We bring it inside of us,
we perceive it around us,
we feel it,
we learn from our ancestor...

Log time ago... (II), Venice 2010.

log time ago...

2010-10-28T11:40:00.001+02:00

Tecnical images seam already so natural for us that we don't notice a wonderful thing: images defines our imagination, the way that we perceive the past represented on the photos.
Look at the photo... made with old style camera has this nice sfumato, that gives feeling of late 19th century...
Only people are so modern...

Venice, long long time ago, 2010.

Il cane a tre colori by Alexander Calder

2010-10-27T00:40:00.001+02:00

Calder is one of my favourite artist. Extremelly funny and intelligent, author of sculptures like Peggy's bedhead that are full of delicate and intime beauty. Very often his was recuring his works to the tradition of using sculpture as totem, magical object that links us with Something.
Both his mobiles and his stable sculptures can be read in that way.
On the Peggy's terrace there is a wonderful Three colours dog:

Il cane a tre colori di Alexander Calder [1973], 2010.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection - the sculpture garden

2010-10-27T00:31:00.001+02:00

Peggy's garden [with Prima luce by Anthony Caro, 1990-93 and Changing Place, Changing Time, Changing Thoughts, Changing Future by Maurizio Nannucci, 2003], 2010.

From Venice with love

2010-10-26T23:09:00.002+02:00

I'm in Warsaw for a while so I have the opportunity to scan some of my photos from Venice!

My internship at the PGC in Venice was an amazing experience.. just because I had the chance to spent all my days with art, surrounded by wonderful pieces... Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, Brancusi, Arp, Miro', Dali', Graham, Kapoor. I could look at the sculptures and painting day after day and ask myself: why like that?
The most wonderful moment was when I was finally finding the answer on the questions that the art work was posing.

Another wonderful experience was to share the love for art with other interns, to listen when they were talking about pieces important or interesting for them.

I remember when Mark made for as, at the beginning of March, an introductory tour to the sculpture garden. It was my first contact with Kapoor's sculpture.

At the end of my internship I took my camera and I tried myself with the garden. It was extremelly difficult...

I'll put some results here.
Let me start with Kapoor's Untitled.

Agata Chrzanowska, Illusions - Anish Kapoor "Untitled" [2007], 2010.

from the series "how the art used to be exhibited"

2010-10-22T00:33:00.002+02:00

When I was in the PGC my dear Carley made her seminar on the significance of the way that sculpture is exhibited and perceived by the public, on its impact on the sense of the work.
With the mass tourism and a huge popularity of the most important museums the question "how the art used to exhibited" can be a nice guide for the biggest world collections: altar in front of Mona Lisa in Louvre (and two paintings of Titian next to it, that are totally "invisible" for the public), " Nike of Samothrace" on the top of Daru staircase in the same museum, guides for the National Gallery with signs how to find the "Sunflowers" by Van Gogh end so on...

The point is that almost every art (especially sculpture) is site specific, made for a specific space and with an aim. Art in the museum lives his life after life.

Agata Chrzanowska, Looking at the Art, Paris, Centre Pompidou 2009.

grey scale

2010-10-04T23:28:00.000+02:00

You've got to know something... I'm not a photographer and, what's more, I'm not an artist at all... that's for sure. If I would be an artist-photographer I would probably try to "catch on the photos the lyrical moments of every day life" and I would take artistic pictures of a frozen chicken on the radiator... [I'm not kidding... It's a quotation from a jury's verdict on a photo contest I took part in. The chicken took the first prize...]
What I do it's just wondering with a camera trough different places, trying to look at the world in a different way... just to not get mad.

Prendere il neccesario distacco...

For you: a cat [not a chicken]... on a stair ... [not on a radiator]...
It's not art, it's just a picture. Enjoy if you want.

Agata Chrzanowska, Grey scale, Venice 2008.

Parc de la Villette

2010-09-20T01:10:00.000+02:00

This time just like that: Parc de la Villette from the cycle "The geometries of glance".

Agata Chrzanowska, Parc de la Villette - The geometries of glance, Paris 2009.

Il palazzo

2010-09-20T00:52:00.000+02:00

So here I am... 1500 km from my birth city, in a place that I love from the first time that I've read "Della famiglia" by Alberti ;) I left and I really don't want to get back, for many different reasons.
How can I explain that feeling? How can I bring closer to my friends here the reality of Warsaw? Those wide empty streets, grey buildings and these extremely sensitive people in the middle of the desert landscape...

The centre of the city is like that. The palace of Knowledge and Culture still dominate over the whole centre... or that what we call "centre"... Built in 1950s on the city ruins was the sign of the Soviet domination over the Poland. Now it's changed into our "Big Ben" thanks to the clock put on the top. In 1990s. there was a huge market under it, now we have a metro station. Hopefully there will be the Museum of Modern Art next to it soon...
He's the axis of the city.

Pałac Kultury:

Agata Chrzanowska, Pałac Kultury i Nauki, Warszawa 2009.

The Stones of Pistoia

2010-07-20T23:45:00.000+02:00

One of (quite obvious) reasons why I appreciate Italy is that here every place preserves a memory of the European civilization... Every palace, every church, every street is related to a though of a man, a personality that in his activity was shaping the reality.. our past, his present...
One of a person like that was Leon Battista Alberti...
I know.. "che palle" will say my Italian friends... But Alberti was one of the most intelligent, versatile humanist, architect, painter, man of letters and so on, and so on. He is actually also a nice case to study for post modern scholars who would put in doubts a part of his activity due to the lack of many sources and proofs. Alberti could be seen just a scholar's invention... a narration... ;).
Even though he is the author of "Della pittura" and "De re aedificatoria" treatises and he is considered to have projected Palazzo Rucellai and the facade of Santa Maria Novella Church in Florence as well as Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini and Saint Andrea church in Mantua.

All that introduction just to show you one of my photos from Pistoia... it's a part of my archives.. still... (I have to develop my films from Venice!!!!).

These are the stones of Pistoia, stones of a church attributed to Alberti. Stones in which a part of his ingegno is hidden.

Agata Chrzanowska, The Stones of Pistoia, 2006.

Frari

2010-05-19T10:14:00.000+02:00

I am in Venice now.
Photographing Venice is not easy at all... The city moves, rolls, shakes and trembles. It is impossible to give an idea of that on a immobile photography.

I tried to make a photographic-film than...
Check this out:

Frari

Traces

2010-05-18T10:24:00.000+02:00

We all leave traces...

Another photo from the past... It was made on a bus stop in Sromowce Wyżne - a small village in the Pieniny Mountain. Next to the stop there was the only shop in the nearest 3 km. I was trying to hitchhike but every car was turning to the shop instead of going to Sromowce Niżne where I was lodging.

Agata Chrzanowska, Traces, 2007.

Flâneurie

2010-05-09T22:29:00.002+02:00

Praga is a district of Warsaw... a very specific place where the time stopped. It's a place of many serious social problems but very often these problems are treated as a 'curiosity' or a local folklore.
Praga becomes the object of the flâneurie, it attracts artistic circles, has ambitions of being the artistic district as the Montmartre was some time ago...
For sure Praga can become the source of new motifs. It is totally unpredictable, it offers the visual surprises, it is full of contrasts and contradictions.
For all that reasons I was doing my Praga flâneurie from time to time.
And this is my Praga series:

Agata Chrzanowska, Yola, 2008.

Agata Chrzanowska, Jazz, 2008.

Agata Chrzanowska, Living room, 2008.

Please date and attribute the monument

2010-02-25T21:13:00.001+01:00

I want to dedicate the photo to all my friends from our History of Art course.

Agata Chrzanowska, Please date and attribute the monument, Florence 2006.

The truth is that I went to Italy in 2006 to see the facade of this church... I set off the train on the Santa Maria Novella station and run to the piazza immediately... and... I saw what you can see above. I've got to say that I found it even interesting...

For Kuba - little bikes in the midle of a Venetian campo

2010-02-24T00:12:00.000+01:00

Kuba asked me why do I put photographs here so rarly. Hmm... That is a good question ;). So I stared to scan another part of my archive... Unfortunately my scanner has problems with color slides. But... I will do all my best!

So... let's start from Venice and its campi. The campi are the centre of Venetian life. Here people gather, talk, eat and, what is most important, here the children play.

Agata Chrzanowska, Little bikes, Venice 2008.

Little bikes... I'm so happy that there are two of them.

Metropolitan by Norman Foster

2010-02-17T21:39:00.000+01:00

Agata Chrzanowska, Metropolitan, 2009.

First of all - long long time ago... there was a summer in Warsaw... It would be easy to forget this fact because the winter seems to be eternal this year.
Another thing: the square frame attracts me...
Last but not least: modern architecture attracts me too.

She feeds the city...

2010-02-10T22:26:00.000+01:00

Wisła... The Vistula River - a miracle of a wild river passing through a city of 2000000 inhabitants.
Yes... I know what you will say... It is truth that the river does not exist in our way of living the city. I hope it would change some day, but still, I do not want it would signify putting the Vistula into a concrete river bed.

Agata Chrzanowska, Wisła, 2009.

Apertura - ore 15... circa...

2010-01-30T23:53:00.000+01:00

Agata Chrzanowska, Una pausa pranzo, Florence 2006.

I like this photo. I took it one September afternoon somwhere in via di Belvedere in Florence. We were going down along the city walls when we found a little shop full of crazy things: London telephone box, mannequin, fruit machine, Vespa... It was a very beautiful place. Unfortunately it was closed. You know... the holy pausa pranzo... We didn't wait... the little word "circa" (about) under the opening hour scared us a little bit... ;)

Dukla

2010-01-25T21:22:00.000+01:00

"No więc Dukla. Dziwne miasteczko, z którego nie ma już dokąd pojechać. Dalej jest tylko Słowacja, a jeszcze dalej Bieszczady, lecz po drodze diabeł powtarza jak litanię swoje "dobranoc" i nic z rzeczy ważnych się nie przydarza, nic, tylko kruche domy przycupnięte przy szosie jak wróble na drucie, a pomiędzy nimi wietrzne wygony nieodmiennie zakończone niebem, które wznosi się a potem przegina, zawisa nad głową, by wesprzeć się o przeciwległy skraj horyzontu. Tak jest - Dukla, uwertura pustych przestrzeni. Dokąd pojechać z Dukli? Z Dukli można tylko wracać. Podkarpacki Hel, urbanistyczna Ultima Thule. Dalej już tylko drewniane chyżki i betonowe okruchy corbusierowskich bastardów - czyli rzeczy, z którymi pejzaż daje sobie jakoś radę. Na pekaesowym dworcu nigdy nie stoją więcej niż dwa autobusy. Ciężarówki z Rumunii zwalniają na chwilę, na pięćset metrów, a przy Bernardynach cisną już do dechy.
Wypija się piwo w Granicznej, wychodzi na środek Rynku i wyobraźnia puchnie jak balon z lekcji fizyki, włożony pod klosz pompy próżniowej. I wtedy Dukla staje się centrum świata, omfalos uniwersum - rzecz, w której zaczynają się wszystkie rzeczy, rdzeń, na który nizają się kolejne warstwy ruchomych zdarzeń, nieodwracalnie zmienionych w nieruchome fikcje: Dorożka jednokonna z Iwonicza 3 korony, dwukonna 7 koron, dyliżans korona pięćdziesiąt. Dyliżans odchodzi o 6:00, 7:30 i o 2 po południu. Spać można w zajeździe u Lichtmanna za koronę pięćdziesiąt, zjeść w pokoju śniadankowym u pana Henryka Muzyka. Trzy tysiące mieszkańców, z czego dwa i pół to Żydzi. Rok, powiedzmy, 1910. Wszystko razem przypomina sepiową fotorafię albo stary celuloid - jedno i drugie łatwo płonie i zostawia po sobie puste miejsce. To tak, jakby spłonął czas. Gdy niszczeją rzeczy istniejące w przestrzeni pozostaje po nich próżnia, którą napełniamy innymi rzeczami. A jak jest z czasem? Prawdopodobnie zrasta się jak coś organicznego i snuje się dalej, bo przyzwyczajeni jesteśmy do ciągłości, która przypomina trochę nieśmiertelność. A jeśli po Mniszchowej, Żydach i dorożkach zostały jakieś miejsca, jakieś nie zajęte przestrzenie, jakieś dziury, podobne do tych wypalonych papierosem w wyjściowym ubraniu?
No więc gdy powracam do Dukli nie obchodzą mnie dyliżanse ani Żydzi, ani reszta. Interesuje mnie tylko to, czy czas jest artykułem jednorazowego użytku jak, dajmy na to, higieniczna chusteczka Povela Corner z Tarnowa. Tylko to."
Andrzej Stasiuk, Dukla, Gładyszów 1999.

Agata Chrzanowska, Dukla, 2007.

Dukla is an end and a beginning. There is nothing beyond this place. The world ends and begins on its marketplace, under the town hall, next to the PTTK hostel.

Dukla has no time and is a no-place. It is a back side of the idea of a place, its negative and its fulfilment.

Sobieskiego 68

2010-01-19T22:42:00.000+01:00

Nothing has changed since 2000...

Agata Chrzanowska, Sandro Pertini Elementary School, Warszawa, 2009.

Looking for the past in the present

2010-01-14T18:50:00.000+01:00

What I like in Warsaw is spying the little traces of the past visuality: neon lights, signs, small forgotten pavilions. It's not their beauty that attracts me. The contact with these relicts is some kind of "hit". The conscience of the past hits me from time to time, the conscience that the past is still present.

Agata Chrzanowska, Herbal medicines, Warsaw 2009.

Destruction/Aesthetization

2010-01-10T15:27:00.002+01:00

Thanks to the human creative forces such abandon places become paradise for everyone who would like to "aesthetize" them. Empty spaces, just like the Piłsudzki's fort, beg for being decorated, revived or animated.

Agata Chrzanowska, Destruction/Aesthetization, 2009.

composition/decomposition

2010-01-07T23:01:00.002+01:00

Even an unfamiliar and savage space has to be "tamed", we are always looking for a way to domesticate it, to grow accustomed to it.
The point of departure is our idea of home, our longing for it - home as a known space, safe and worm, private or even intimate but at the same time cosy are inviting.
This is a home at the Piłsudzki's fort:

Agata Chrzanowska, Composition/decomposition. Piłsudzki's fort, Warsaw, 2009.

destruction/decomposition

2010-01-05T21:33:00.002+01:00

Welcome to 2010! All the best for this New Year!

Ireneusz Zjeżdżałka, one of my favourite Polish photographers, dead in 2008, created a photographic cycle entitled Sedimantation. In the series Zjeżdżałka was documenting the process of destruction and decomposition of the past by showing some empty, abandon spaces, buildings, industrial plants, schools, homes. Their destruction unveiled layers of history accumulated on things, memories and traces of human activity.
Abandon and destroyed spaces, where the natural proceses start to decomposite human's works, are part of my everyday perception of Warsaw.
One of this kind of places is Piłsudzki's fort next to me, a place suspended by existence and destruction, no more a fort, not yet a park, a monument...

Agata Chrzanowska, Destruction/Decomposition - Piłsudzki's fort, Warsaw, 2009.

Place Vendôme

2009-12-27T11:38:00.000+01:00

Paris is a city of 1000 faces. At the same time it can be quiet and bustling, familiar and anonymous, modern and ancient, spacious and tight. The great part of the centre is definitely monumental, projected (mainly during the Haussmann's rebuildings) as a scene of a mundane spectacle. It was (and still is) impossible to pass the boulvards without being seen or noticed and without seeing everybody around you. It's a strange sensation of being in the centre of attention without any possibility of hiding.
That's why the flaneurie born in Paris, as an escape from the theatre-made centre to the suburb. In these savage zones the high-born flaneur could get lost in the crowd strolling and observing, looking at and not being noticed. He was a stranger there but at the same time he had the power of a unilateral glance.
One of these monumental spaces in Paris is Place Vendôme projected in 1699 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. This vast space seems to be open while it's closed from each side by tipical Parisian "hôtels". One feel free but the limits of this freedom are clearly marked.

Agata Chrzanowska, Place Vendôme, August 2009.

Parisian memories

2009-12-26T01:14:00.000+01:00

Thanks to a gift I can finally digitize my photos. First of all I started to scan the photographs from my parisian holidays.
What a pleasure!
Today (tonight) I put one of the photos. Enjoy!

Agata Chrzanowska, Centre Pompidou, Paris, août 2009.

Parallel divisions

2009-12-25T01:12:00.003+01:00

In childhood the space accessible for me was strongly limited and divided in certain zones. What I notice now is that these limits were all parallel: the first one was a street which divided my 'high' estate from the 'low' one accros it. Different blocks, different people. Only friendship between children could connect these two worlds. It wasn't often.
The second one - my street which devided the estate in two parts (even and odd). I live the odd one. The even one always seemed to me a little bit mysterious, shady, much more wild than my well known, regular surroundings.
Crossing these streets was a beginning of an adventure, it was a transgression. For me there was starting a real voyage to a different world governed by different rules. Some kind of Narnia Kingdom or something.
The third limit was a ditch behind the blocks of the even part of my estate which devided them from the fields. It was the real limit and the end of my world. On the other side there was nothing or maybe everything. The end and the beginning.
One time, I remember, my brother turned back home totaly soaked. The question was: "What happened to you?" ... and he said: "The ditch pounced on me".
You see, it was better not to play with these parallel divisions.

Agata Chrzanowska, Familiar surroundings, 2009

Familiar surroundings

2009-12-23T17:02:00.000+01:00

Photography offers a possiblity to register exterior views of the external aspect of the world. Sometimes photographs are witnesses of changes, exterior changes... My surrodings, like a great part of Poland, during my lifetime has underwent radical changes. Some of them were immediate, other appeared more gradually.
But at the end: what did really change around me?
- my shop now is well provided, no more empty shelfs
- I have a animal vet next door
- the estate is quite colourful thanks to the UE standards on heating expenses
These are those external changes.
But I really belive that changes were deeper. I am quite sure they are. If not, I wouldn't have been in Florence last week trying to pass exams for a PhD course.
How to show the transition? Maybe it would be visible behind the wals of people's appartments?
Maybe it is impossible to capture them with a camera...

Agata Chrzanowska, Familiar surroundings, 2009.

for the beginning...

2009-12-22T22:31:00.000+01:00

The moment of my internet photographic comming out has come!
I created this blog because I wanted to share with you my photographic passion, show you some of my works.

Photography means seeing, seeing means knowing.
Photography defines my way of partecipating in the world, my understanding, my way of looking and thinking. Each photography begins when my look stops and I start to see. Every furhter step is a conseguence of the stop of my glance.

I work with series. I begin with something and then it continues, lives his own life in my mind and my eye, it shows up around me and then I stop. The theme is always open and incomplete.
The biggest series for the moment narrates Warsaw: its views, places, contrasts, my love and hate of the city. Inside this large repertoire of motives I create smaller series.

The first of them concerns the place where I was growing up seen with child's eyes: familiar surroundings, places known by heard. I tried to look for my playgrounds, spaces of my childhood's games. Did I find them? Did they exist?
They were always hidden between and along: between blocks of flats, between and along streets and pavements. It was my school of experiencing the city space.

Agata Chrzanowska, Familiar surroundings, 2009.