Place Vendôme

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

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

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

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...

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.