When you look at the photograph, think for a moment that perhaps she is gazing at you too. It's such a perfect meeting of gazes. All photographs are created in space, on a small planet, on the edge of our galaxy. The human photographer is a humble part of the great process of creating the cosmos, spanning billions of years. Links and relationships are everywhere, we are made of the same matter that the stars are made of. Light reveals to us the geometry of space, so important and present in photography, which is from light.
Ania's photographs are like crumbs of the world gathered by light into a story during the author's micro wanderings, a journey between earth and sky, joy and sorrow, life and death. These wanderings become synonymous with unfettered freedom, understood as a space to be filled with images. Chaos to be calmed down and turned into order. These works require the viewer to stop and stare before they reveal their meaning. They show distant landscapes, sometimes isolated parts of them. Trees, roads, the often present sky and water, are the protagonists of these photographs, which are never fully known, as they reveal something unknown and new to the viewer, something that makes them open to multiple interpretations. Photographing Ani is like wandering into favorite places, old backyards, mysterious corners, full of traces left by people, empty chairs and open spaces of the sky.
The resulting works are the story of these encounters, a lesson in attentiveness. You can look for photography, often not finding it, but when you meet it, it is like a gift and a hug from a friend.
Tomasz Michałowski
Anna Habdas-Czujko about herself: - Twelve years ago I saw an album in which a friend showed a photograph of birds, next to it was a short poem about freedom, and so I wanted to intuitively enter the world of images. That's when I bought an Olympus E480 digital camera, which I didn't know how to turn on at the time. On my own, step by step, I observed the world through the viewfinder and that's how it stayed.
The photographs in the exhibition are taken digitally. A few are with this very camera, and most, after it was stolen, with a Sony alfa6000 mirrorless camera.
When I photograph, I often close the aperture so that I can look at the light, at its reflections in the surroundings of a shadowy, understated space, where mystery has its place, nooks and crannies that trigger the imagination and allow work that perhaps takes place outside of consciousness. Looking through the viewfinder at all that beautifully and intensely reflects light causes a number of positive reactions in the body.
I photograph because often a place needs me. I can't explain it, but then I know that I have to be there and stop that call in the frame. I think it is a kind of dialogue with the place, with space, with time, which are the components of the image that want something from us. They look at us and we look at them and they touch our soul.
At the Jelenia Góra Landscape School I came into contact with analog photography.For the past two years I have been photographing with a Roleycord camera. I made a series of portraits of Eugeniusz Józefowski with it. I developed the negatives myself. But these are the first steps.
Julia Hartwig, Emily Dickinson are women whose poetry shapes the mood of my photographs.
I like contrasts, but I also find Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs of the horizon study extremely inspiring.
The music of the young Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo with words from Solomon's "Song of Songs" in the piece "Northern lights" allows you to move to another dimension in the process of selecting a frame. Then the most interesting thing for me takes place, because I then touch something extraordinary, something that is beyond the material realm.
I combine poetry with music, but also with images. These spheres complement each other.
Some poems were created at the same time as music as songs, and therefore to be sung. These are short "sing-alongs" that constitute a kind of image with an often emotional tinge, as opposed to photographs, from which I would like to see peace and the possibility of contemplation emanate to the viewer.
Before I get out of winter,
I will shake your hand.
Before spring can be felt,
I'll throw out the sounds.
Before I run into summer
barefoot
The meadow in red,
Into a rainbow of gold.
What is unchangeable
I whisper with the wind.
What is important
I will smooth out with a pen.
I will overcome any steep mountain,
To jump into the ocean of bliss,
All things human, closeness to feel.
March 30, 2015
I sit
I sat down to rest.
My wings. You dressed them curiously.
You longed to feel what it was like
float above the ground,
try to touch the clouds,
have a sun-weaved covering
Or lined with wind.
You can see and feel
via me.
More and Stronger.
I am a prism.
Behind me only a rainbow,
magic passage
Into a land created with imagination.
Spring Monday 2011
Waldek, I am sending you a dozen poems, as well as a link with a presentation titled. "Meeting" in which there are my photographs, the aforementioned poems and music by my husband Zbigniew Czujko. The editing, unfortunately, is not professional, but I hope you will get through. It can be found on YouTube - you need to type "Meetings Anna Habdas-Czujko". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPso6DGJ9O8
Anna Habdas-Czujko - Born in Zlotorya, physiotherapist, chorister of the Sudecka Philharmonic since 2015, member of the Walbrzych Photography Club since 2011. In 2019 she graduated from the Annual School of Landscape Photography in Jelenia Gora. She writes poetry and often creates music for it. Hiking, traveling, meeting people, music and literature are the pretext for creating photographs that reflect the author's inner self while bringing extraordinary moments of elation. These, in turn, are the reason for enjoying the creative process. A very important place for her is occupied by the spiritual sphere, which she tries to develop through reading and contemplating nature, art, experiencing, conversations, and practicing mindfulness.
