"My Trees" by Jacek Slusarczyk in Jelenia Góra.

On Friday, January 10, 2025 at 5 pm in the Gallery "Corridor" of the Jelenia Góra Cultural Center in Jelenia Góra will begin the vernissage of beautiful photography by Jacek Ślusarczyk from the series My Trees, which in 2022 we had the opportunity to admire in Walbrzych. You are cordially invited. The exhibition can be seen until February 13, 2025.

Wojciech Rohatyn Popkiewicz wrote about the Walbrzych exhibition:

The tree was reflected in the glass. This was captured by a photograph. What's next? Did it turn green in the spring? Or maybe someone cut it down ? Or is it still growing there, only the glass was shattered by the wind... That we do not know. What remains, however, is a photograph. A split second between the eye, the shutter, the glass. More durable at times than a tree, than a pane of glass, although, after all, also ephemeral. However, it remained in the memory of the cosmos forever. And in the drawer. When the digital, global world disappears one day, the memory of photographs in drawers can be priceless. Like the records of books in temples that have survived the centuries and have not been consumed by fire, as in Alexandria.

The naked trees in the black and white photograph will tell us more than books. Their branches are frozen in a phase of evolution, a search for twisted ways of survival, the drama of existence written in every twist of the branches, in the pursuit of light and water, in the desire to master the close space, to duplicate themselves once again. The process is best seen when it comes to a sudden standstill - as in Jack Slusarczyk's frame. These are Earth's galaxies.

We are approaching the truth about trees when they are bare. We don't yet know if this is their death, the end, or on the contrary they are preparing for a spring break to hide their intentions for years to come in the attuned greenery.

Owners of large castle estates, such as Książ, Łańcut, and Kórnik, planted parks with saplings of trees with pedigrees as magnificent as theirs. They never saw them in all their mature splendor. It is we who can look at them in awe at any time of the year. They have outlasted many human generations. There are traces of lightning, drought, windstorms on them. They are most feared by saws. Still the trunk defends itself. Still the root decomposes giving new life to a million organisms.

When billions of trees die, which is what happens after all, humanity withers. The trees of the Amazon primeval forest will not bare their branches. They would be evergreen if not, year after year, civilization's verdict. Fly there Jack! Capture them in your photograph with love. The death of baobabs in Madagascar is also spectacular and painful.

In our country, for the time being, only the gardener in the orchard will weep over a withered apple tree, as if a child had died. Trees and people are so different and so similar. Time makes them different. And he also makes them similar. In twisted branches and in wrinkles. If the trees run out, we won't catch our breath and it will be the Last Pandemic. But when the world becomes deserted, the trees will repopulate it. They will bloom without fear. (Source: https://bwa.walbrzych.pl/wystawa/2942/)

JACEK SLUSARCZYK - a Walbrzychian, currently living in Podlesie. He has been photographing since the 1980s.

Selected exhibitions:

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITION - BWA Zamek Książ, Wałbrzych, 2002 | BIENNALE "CHILDREN" - Rzeszów, 1983 | 4+1 - Wałbrzych, 1985 | POLISH MONUMENTS - Jastrzębie Zdrój, 1986 | BIENNALE OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Piła, 1988 | MEETINGS WITH PHOTOGRAPHY - Jastrzębie Zdrój, 1988, 1991 | CONFRONTATIONS - Leszno, 1994 | CONTEST OF MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY - Jelenia Góra, 1998, 2000 | BIENNALE OF MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY - Nowy Targ, 2000 | BIENNALE OF GOLDEN MUSZLA PHOTOGRAPHY - Koszalin, 2000 | BIENNALE OF ORDINARY CASTLE - Kielce, 2002 | Silesian CLIMATES - Walbrzych, Wroclaw, 2003 | ART-EKO - Kielce, 2003 | 5th Triennial of Walbrzych Photography - Walbrzych, 2019 | 4th International Biennial of Photography DEFINITION OF SPACE - Kielce 2020.

In addition, participation in group exhibitions in Italy - Milan, 1994 | Estonia - Tartu, 1994 | Brazil - Jau, 1994.