"Gliwice - Theater. City like a stage" Exhibition of photographs by Dariusz Trześniowski. vernissage - February 29 (Thursday), 6:00 pm.
| Duration of the exhibition: 29.02.2024 - 7.04.2024. Place: Art Reading Room, 8a Dolnych Wałów Street, 44-100 Gliwice Head of the Art Reading Room: Grzegorz Krawczyk Organizer: Art Reading Room-Museum in Gliwice Art Reading Room, 8a Dolnych Wałów Street, 44-100 Gliwice. Black and white photography accompanies me in every moment of my life - I think with photography, I look at the world with an imaginary prism of a medium format or the matte of a large format camera. This is how ideas are generated - I pass a place, an element of the urban landscape that draws my attention, and I think about how I could use it for photographs. This place attracts me, I return to it repeatedly, check the changing light, note in my memory all the details and how they look in different weather conditions, choose the most suitable time of day. In the evening I prepare the equipment. Falling asleep, I once again review the subsequent frames in my mind, it happens that they appear completely different to me later on In a dream... I get up before six in the morning, set the coffee and go to the darkroom. I take the first deep breath, filling myself with its scent. From that moment on, I know it's going to be a good day. Another good day in Gliwice. In 2015, I began a year-long informal collaboration with the Municipal Theater in Gliwice - my goal was to create a documentary showing the first year of the new theater's operation. I documented rehearsals for all performances of the first season, in my work I did not limit myself to what happens on the theater stage. I was even more interested in what happened offstage, in informal situations, in dressing rooms, in corridors and at post-premiere parties. My goal, in addition to documenting stage work, was to show everyday life backstage, the moments when an actor steps out of a role and becomes himself again, a person taking part in ordinary interactions. Very soon I expanded my documentary project - I began to invite actors to pose in places that are not symbols, landmarks of our city and its immediate surroundings. Thus, not Neptune's fountain in the market square, but a tree with a huge hollow growing in the fields next to Sikornik, not the Radio Station's mast, but its broadcasting apparatus, not the renovated train station, but the crumbling buildings of the locomotive depot in Pyskowice, not the modern "Olimpijczyk" swimming pool, but the ruins of the open-air swimming pool in Zabrze, not the representative townhouses at the market, but the crumbling townhouses on Krzywa Street. I photograph exclusively on analog equipment and using analog materials: negatives and papers, which I develop with my own hands in a traditional darkroom. On the negative, which I use most often, I have twelve frames. From one negative I choose one-two good shots, use up several negatives, and in this way I am able to tell about the performance in eight pictures. In addition, from start to finish I control the entire process of creating the photo myself - I choose the exposure, choose the chemistry for processing the negatives, the way they are developed, the paper, and finally I frame the photos myself in passe-partout and frames. I love sitting in the darkroom, I like the smell of the chemistry that remains in the room even after thorough airing. Anyone who glued model airplanes with butaprene as a child knows what I'm talking about. In my opinion, only photographs developed in the traditional way have the right depth, dynamics, richness of shades of white, gray and black, they are vivid. Black and white analog image, especially in the context of theater, operates with understatement, it is a highly subjective image, in fact, it more does not show than shows, thus giving the viewer a huge room for interpretation, forcing him to recreate in his imagination the image that I capture on film and then on paper. Dariusz Trześniowski DARIUSZ TRZEŚNIOWSKI (born 1975) - graduated in English philology from Jagiellonian University in Krakow. From 2004 to 2015, he lived in Luxembourg and Brussels, where he graduated from L'Académie Constantin Meunier in Prof. Paul Fumieur's art photography atelier. He is a member of the Union of Polish Artists Photographers. |
