Long-term documentary projects are not an overly common choice among photographers today. There are several reasons for this.
The media is alive with fast news, with an overwhelming number of photos being published on mass social media - where they also capture the attention of viewers for only a fraction of the time. Many modern photographers seduced by the technical ease of recording digital photographs succumb to mass trends, publishing easily digestible images on the Internet, whose value is measured by click-through rates and "likes."
The most important reason in my opinion, which is not often mentioned, is that multi-year projects are monstrously expensive and complicated. Few people these days can afford to devote time and money to working for years on a single topic, time-consuming preparation or in-depth studies of the nature of the world.
Nevertheless, even though the golden days of complex and multithreaded documentary projects are long gone, I still happen to find a photographic essay in a flurry of online publications that catches my attention. And that's exactly what happened with Amadeus Spruce's "The Shack," realized over four years.
The "Shack" of the title is a special place, with a long and rich history dating back to the 1980s. At the time, it was run by hippies who created an asylum there for people fleeing oppressive government and the bleak times of communism. Over the past few decades, hidden deep in the forests of the Karkonosze Mountains, the hermitage with no electricity or internet, continues to be a place where people consciously escaping from the tiresome present day meet every weekend, who are trying to indulge in self-reflection, focus on deeper relationships with others, or simply - inner quiet. However, not everyone can join this community. Over the years, the place has become a legend.
The shack has a rich, mostly unwritten set of rules and regulations. Created by the "old guard," for whom it was a tool for vetting people and keeping the place without much publicity. They are guarded by Khatar, who lives there permanently. Amadeus has become a regular visitor to the place and has been documenting life inside the Khatar community for the past five years, creating a special series of photographs. Although he didn't initially plan to build any set of them, the idea for the realization came with the maturation of the material and the experience of a participant in the informal subculture created around the place, where people seek escape from...
My first impression when I saw these photographs was the extraordinary sincerity and cordiality with which Amadeus photographs the intimate moments inside hut life. The people in his photos behave spontaneously, and he seems to be transparent. Rarely do you see documentary photographs where the photographer's interference, however unintentional, with the subject is completely absent. More often than not, the very presence of the camera causes people to start behaving differently, aware of being observed and recorded. Looking at these photos, we feel that we see a real relationship between the photographed and the creator of these pictures, which is indisputably unique. The classic black-and-white style and the way of framing without any fashionable quirks, matches the sincerity of the behavior and empathy of the people photographed.
During long conversations with the author about photography - and we had a lot of time together going to Ukraine with humanitarian aid in early April this year - Amadeus justified his choice of frames and black-and-white style this way:
- The black and white aesthetics correspond with the nostalgia with which I associate the "hut" - places of social alternative, natural lifestyle - close to nature and with each other. Without modern technology in between.
The final realization of the "Hut" project was helped by the Canon Students Development Program mentoring program, where Maciej Nabrdalik supported the author in the selection and selection of photos.
I hope we will hear more about Amadeus' photography, he is currently pursuing other long documentary projects, and already has several completed. For me, because of his interest in the Middle East, a series on Iranian nomads is particularly to my liking.
Poznan, May 18, 2022
Amadeus Spruce (1995) Graduate of the electronics department of the Wroclaw University of Technology. Interested in documentary, press and travel photography. In his photography he takes up especially the subjects of ethnic and religious minorities. Currently involved in humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Dr. Jerzy Wierzbicki (1975) - archaeologist and documentary photographer, participant in archaeological expeditions to the Middle East, from 2007 to 2014 he was in Oman, where he worked as a photojournalist for the Times of Oman and the Arabic-language newspaper Al Shabiba. From 2009 to 2014, he worked with the weekly Y Magazine. In 2017 he defended his doctorate in photography at the "Film School" in Lodz.
