vernissage and book launch / Friday, July 1, 2022 / 6:30 pm / Września Market Square
Mox, Longe, Tarde - from the curator
Karol Szymkowiak
DECEMBER 2021
The only effective protection against the "black death," when it claimed millions of victims in 14th-century Europe, was escape. This prescription, dating back to the time of Hippocrates, found its expression in a then-popular Latin saying: Mox, longe, tarde, meaning: run away quickly, far away, not soon return. These three adverbs defined the attitude of the time to plagues, originating, it was believed, from poisoned, morose air. People from places affected by the moor did indeed flee, often at the last minute and blindly, in effect spreading the plague even further.
Nowadays, globalization has made it possible for the COVID-19 virus to be transmitted very quickly and widely around the world. In the global village, there are no places to escape to. Instead of fleeing, we have begun to hide in our own homes, giving us a sense of security. However, not everyone living on the globe, as we grapple with successive waves of pandemics, has the privilege of safe, even if oppressive home isolation for some of us. Despite the experience of a worldwide pandemic that we have just lived through, we have not been able as humanity to control our weaknesses, which continue to provide us with new, albeit so familiar, reasons to flee. Wars, poverty, religious or political persecution. Successive waves of pandemics are interspersed with waves of migration.
Although the act of escaping is Maciej Jeziorek's starting point, he is interested not so much in its reasons stricto sensu, but in its consequences, specifically, what we leave behind as a result of this escape. To discover this, he enters our homes, our asylums, and begins working at the intersection of photography, painting and cataloging. He creates a collection.
Its first layer is a set of still lifes, in the depiction of which the author freely balances between baroque painting and science fiction aesthetics. Exaggerated chiaroscuro, mysterious refleksy of light, objects sometimes shown at the limit of visibility of the human eye, presented against a uniform dark background, forcing concentration in times of progressive attention deficit - the form of the photographs, their superficial illegibility determines the necessity of studying them carefully, staring at the image for a long moment. As a result, we not only look at the catalogued objects, but also actually see them. In the paintings we find references to symbolism native to the already mentioned Baroque. It also appears in the second layer of the collection, which consists of photographs of the interiors of houses. Interrupted, sometimes barely tasted meals, remnants of an unfinished feast, the symbolism is all too obvious. The author confronts us with a situation of ultimate escape.
As a result of the pandemic, we have had to redefine many areas of our lives. In particular, the - prevailing belief in the Western world - of living in peaceful, safe times has become outdated. Maciej Jeziorek encourages us to reflexamine what we appropriate and produce, what we then surround ourselves with, and what we will leave behind as a result. Finally, what we will return to. It encourages us to seek a broader, ego-free context, at a time when we are facing new threats, such as climate catastrophe. The next escape, then, seems inevitable, even if for now it is an escape from responsibility.
FEBRUARY 24, 2022
Mox, longe, tarde.
APRIL 2022
The cruel reality overtook the project's release. I guess it is impossible to look at these photographs today without associating them with the situation in Ukraine. Without thinking about the millions of people fleeing the war, leaving all their lives behind. This was never supposed to happen again, at least not here, not in Europe. We thought of the pandemic in the same way, by the way: as if it were a bygone, outdated threat that we would never face again.
Today, we can conclude that by the joint efforts of all mankind, we have succeeded not so much in defeating, but rather in taming a hitherto unknown virus. Russia's aggression against Ukraine, however, reminds us that man's most dangerous and, so far, irrepressible enemy remains himself.
Maciej Jeziorek
Born in 1973 in Warsaw, Poland. Co-founder and member of the Napo Images agency, member of the Union of Polish Artists Photographers. Graduate of the theological studies at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw and the Photography Study at the Yuri Gagarin Phototechnical School Complex in Warsaw.
Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2012, 2018). He worked for "Tygodnik Solidarność", the dailies "Życie", "Życie Warszawy" and "Polska". He cooperated with the Polish Agency of Photographers Forum. Repeatedly awarded at photography competitions. Author of photography books: "Like Through Glass", "317 Days to Mars", "Message".
Information - book:
Maciej Jeziorek - Mox, Longe, Tarde - Wrzesin Collection 2021
92 pages
42 photographs
format: 270x240mm
binding: hardback
language: Polish, English
year of publication: 2022
edition: I
circulation: 500 pieces
release date: July 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-83-917850-4-1
Publisher: City and Commune Office of Września
Printing and binding: Petit Lublin
Photographs: Maciej Jeziorek
Marbling: Hanna and Tadeusz Jeziorek
Curator: Karol Szymkowiak
Design: Andrzej Dobosz
Pre-press: Tomasz Kubaczyk
Translated by Tomasz Bałdowski
Proofreading: Ursula Kifer
Wrzesińska Collection
The Września Collection is a multi-year photographic project that results in the creation of an artistic photographic archive of the City and Commune of Września. The mayor of Września Town and Commune, Tomasz Kalużny, invites one photographer chosen by the curator to an artistic residency each year. The artist's task is to create a personal set of photographs that "portrays" the municipality and its residents. In doing so, he is given complete creative freedom, both in terms of the subjects covered and the ways in which they are presented. The results of his work are published in the form of an artistic photography book and presented at an exhibition in Września.
Thanks to the Września Collection, the residents of Września City and Municipality have the opportunity to look at themselves and the space they live in from the perspective of an artist who is an outside observer. Thanks to this "external eye" they have the opportunity to learn something new about people, places and phenomena that are so close to them, yet often escape their attention in everyday life. The Wrzesnia collection is also addressed "outside", beyond the city in which it is created. Września thus becomes a kind of universal city, through which the photographer tells stories with a much broader context, beyond, but resulting from the place of realization.
In the future, this collection of photographs will be an invaluable testimony about our times. Today, the collection is meant to explore, make you think and pose questions.
Authors of the Wrzesnia Collection:
2009 - Bogdan Konopka (1953-2019)
2010 - Andrzej Jerzy Lech
2011 - Mariusz Forecki
2012 - Nicolas Grospierre
2013 - Zbigniew Tomaszczuk
2014 - Katarzyna Majak
2015 - Adam Lach
2016 - Rafal Milach
2017 - Filip Springer
2018 - Zuza Krajewska
2019 - Chris Niedenthal and Tadeusz Rolke
2020 - Magdalena and Maksymilian Rigamonti
2021 - Maciej Jeziorek
Curators of the Wrzesnia Collection:
2009 - 2014 - Waldemar Sliwczynski
from 2015 - Karol Szymkowiak
Patron of the Września Collection project: Mayor of the City and Municipality of Września Tomasz Kalużny
