The idea was, as they say, simple, but in the end not so ingenious, to achieve in the art of photography a new aesthetic quality, hitherto rarely seen, and perhaps hidden in it (in this quality) an interesting or novel rhetorical message.
Well, from January 1 to December 31, 2021, Michal Sobczak took (by design) one photo every day for a series called "365." Starting with this idea on January 1, he knew that until December 31 he had to take a camera (or any other device with a 'photo' function) out of his pocket or bag at least once a day and take with it at least one photo that would go into this cycle.
This was not a daily permanent photography, calculated for years, or even for a lifetime, like the painting of numbers in the case of conceptualist Roman Opalka, who, let's recall, used white paint to write down rows of numbers on canvas; at first he did it on a black background, then changed it in successive degrees of gray, and, gradually lightening the background used, came to finally write down white numbers on a white background. He additionally pronounced each number by recording it on a tape recorder, and added to the finished day's work each day his actual photographic self-portrait (same facial arrangement, tight frame, still the same pose and shirt, same light) taken most likely with a tripod camera and self-timer or trigger hose. The series is/was meant to represent the passage of time of the man. Add that this is his most recognizable artistic work, known as the series OPAL 1965 /1 - ∞ called by the artist and critics Program. The first painting in this series featured the numbers from 1 to 35327.
This short footnote about Roman Opalka's "idea" is here only to show the scale of the difference between a simple idea and an artistic idea. However, the minimal similarity between what Roman Opalka did/does for 46 years and what Michal Sobczak did/does in his one-year "365" series, allows one to look at the year-long idea of the Września-based photographer with kindness and hope that his effort was not in vain. These notes have no scholarly ambitions, they are fundamentally devoid of the weight of deeper reflection, as I am neither an art historian, let alone a theorist of photographic activities. I am looking at the "365" series in an amateurish way, just trying to take a solid look at it, and above all to understand it. I imagine, for example, that the number of recurring motifs in this series is close to the number of letters of our alphabet, and if so, perhaps the story woven from them about the world, or rather about fragments, second-by-second excerpts of the world - which Michal Sobczak first saw and then photographed, creating from these excerpts a personal, history of looking and seeing - is a kind of long, pictorial fairy tale, broken down into 365 short sentences. I know from my own experience that 'looking' does not always mean 'seeing'. So the question is: what did the author of the series look at?, what did he see? and how did he photograph it? One can still ask about the purpose (if there was one) of this action. I could, of course, ask these questions of the author of the photographs, but since I proceed from the assumption that a work of art (including the art of photography) should defend itself without instruction manuals and authorial quibbles, I transfer the effort of finding answers to myself, i.e. the one who looks at Sobczak's photographs on his computer monitor.
From what I remember, the author of the series - presenting it first in Sliwnica, and at the beginning of this year at the Moment Club - briefly explained that he had been carrying the intention to face such a year-round photographic project for several years, but made the decision to start working on it on January 1, 2021, after taking the first photo (1 - 365). As he himself mentioned in his speech, the motivation to undergo the year-round rigor of photography, a certain discipline forcing him to be active on a daily basis, came from the fact that he is the type of hypersensitive person who sometimes has worse days (when he has a so-called mental doze), and this project effectively pulled him out of his somewhat depressive slowdowns and existential grayness.
if already, rather
photo-therapeutic
Hence, probably, the "365" project was not, by definition, a conceptual-artistic activity (if anything, it was rather photographic-therapeutic), not an activity calculated to search for and apply strictly defined formal procedures in order to achieve previously designed aesthetic values. My impression is that it is a collection of more or less accidental "visual events," happening in places where the author of these photographs was on a given day or at a given moment (from Września and Pyzdry, through Wroclaw and Poznan to Hel and the Warta beaches), where he was thrown by fate or by the rhythm of the working week (since, importantly, he is a full-time employee of a certain manufacturing plant in the Słupeckie district, and commutes to the company in his own car), the rhythm of free weekends, or two weeks of vacation.
To view in this way, i.e. on a computer monitor, all the photographic images that make up the "365" series - assuming that 10 seconds is allotted for the initial "examination" of one frame - one needs to spend a full hour, or even a bit more. I viewed the first two-thirds of the whole in the fall of 2021 during a private meeting of photographers from Września, Gniezno, Leszno and Poznań. At that time, as I mentioned, the author of the series talked about his idea and how it was implemented. I was able to get acquainted with the rest of the photos, which were created between mid-September and the end of December, in January of this year, at the MOMENT Photographic Club, operating at the Wrzesnia Cultural Center, during a presentation of the latest output of the club's members. The title number "365" in Michal Sobczak's series refers to the number of days in a year, as the rule "one day - one photo" is not strictly observed in this series. In several cases, one motif from a given day consists of two or three frames (21 ab, 80, 140 ab, 223, 234, 262, 332 abc, 365).
To conclude, just to say that looking at this set at my home for the second and third time, I asked myself three questions: 1) how could Michal Sobczak's year-long photographic effort be used or popularized (in one case, 236, it's a black square, because the shutter button was deliberately pressed in a dark room)? 2) how would this series work on the walls in a gallery, e.g. shown linearly, according to the numbering from 1 to 365, and what would a professional curator do with it? 3) since I know several people whose photographic activity has changed their lives for the better, I wonder how much does imaging the world, the one in sight, go from a therapeutic function to an aesthetic or even artistic function? And does it transition?
Well, but these questions of a simple amateur and ordinary viewer can be answered, I think, only by wiser people than me, and above all by experienced photographers, art critics, curators and cultural scientists. I - thanking Michael for his year-long journey along the roads, streets, squares, paths and wilderness of our homeland, for his pictorial tale of life, friendships, fascinations and the soul of a man with a camera - will limit myself in my notes to the above dozen or so sentences and to the proposal that the audience of "Quarterly Photography" view the following frames from the series.
woven from them, a story about the world, or rather about fragments, second-by-second extracts of the world - which Michal Sobczak first saw and then photographed, creating from these extracts a personal, history of looking and seeing
Michal Sobczak Born in 1979, he is a native of Ciążec and currently a resident of Września. Since 2010, he has belonged to the Fotodialog Group and has shown his works with it, as well as organized exhibitions. Currently, he is a member of the Września photographic club - Klub Moment. Self-taught photographer, sensitive observer of light, solitary narrator. He has shown his works in group exhibitions - Fotodialog with the past (2014), VIII OFFO (2019), Klub Moment - Dreams (2020), among others.
