Jerzy Wierzbicki's photographs of Oman in recent years both have something in common with and differ from his earlier works. In such series of works as "Gdańsk - Suburbia" (1995-2004) and "Post-Industrial Silesia" (2001-2006), he dealt with places that have suffered from the economic crisis.
His attention was drawn to the devastated architecture and the general temporariness of the situation, but there it was equally important to show the people associated with these places. They were the ones who enlivened the melancholy scenery, nevertheless manifesting their vitality and openness to contact. Also, the aesthetics of black-and-white photography, perfectly applied to these subjects, neutralized unambiguously pessimistic feelings. Jerzy Wierzbicki's photographs from Oman, on the other hand, are different if only by the fact that they do not show people at all, but only the interiors of abandoned houses. The difference is also due to the expressive use of the natural colors of these places. The interiors of abandoned houses intrigue with strongly saturated colors, expressive despite the stigmata of decay, which contrasts in a painful way for the eye with the brightness of the sun, which aggressively shines through the holes in the walls.
As the author explains, this state of affairs is not the result of some cataclysm caused by war or the element of nature, but resulted from the sudden prosperity of the community that once inhabited these houses. Revenues from the sale of oil allowed the Sultan of Oman to emolument his citizens so that they moved to modern buildings in the cities, to lives of much higher standards. They abandoned their traditionally constructed homes, along with much of their contents, and these interiors were shown by the photographer in a state aimed at their complete annihilation. Capturing what is passing is the primary impulse for any photographer. Therefore, he can appreciate equally the banal manifestations of modernity and the unique remnants of distant history. The economic success of society can dampen in people the need to care for their own history and allow its traces to be destroyed. It is often outsiders who pay attention to the traces of the past, as they want to be inspired by it rather than free from it.
The interiors of the houses photographed by Jerzy Wierzbicki certainly have nothing in them that their owners could be proud of in the modern world, where universal and easily replaceable qualities are valued. However, we feel that it is in the remnants of the furnishings of these homes that the needs, customs, and hierarchies of importance of their inhabitants have been recorded. Will they be able to sustain elsewhere what determines their identity? Circumstances have allowed them to move to places more promising to them and no longer toil for survival here. Thus, we see nature taking possession of the space once torn away from her and encroaching on the interiors of the houses with violent sunstrokes and factors that intensify the erosion process.
The eloquence of these photographs can, in a perverse way, allude to those meanings usually associated with the subject of "still life" in art. This kind of painting was usually meant to encourage philosophical reverie about the impermanence of possessions and the inevitable passage of time, even though it simultaneously exposed the beauty of the world and the allure of existence among objects of luxury. This kind of moralizing through art was once religiously motivated and aimed at the elite, while in more recent times it has given way to forms of communication associated with mass culture and mechanisms of democratic consumption of goods. The absentee residents of the old houses in Oman were most likely tempted by the vision of life promoted in modern times. One is reminded here of Richard Hamilton's famous 1956 collage. "Why are modern homes so different, so appealing?", where the author accumulated reproductions of various commonly desired accessories of modernity. This title question has not lost its relevance, as it is enlivened by an ever-newer assortment of consumer goods. Jerzy Wierzbicki's photographs, however, do not show this new reality. The people and the obtained beauty of modern life are elsewhere, and only the image of the despised past remains in the field of view. The author, who in various cycles of his works focused on the symptoms of crisis and disintegration of various forms of social life, thus seems to convey a critical assessment of the entire category of modernity. Modernity - as a process of industrialization, urbanization, automation, standardization that has been developing for more than 200 years - has passed through a series of stages causing successive upheavals. At each stage, people were forced to abandon their already formed lifestyles in order to adapt to the successive rules of modernity and avoid marginalization. Although modernity promises an approximation to the desired ideal of life each time, for a number of reasons, it can be thought that it is in the abandoned forms of existence that more authentic values remain than the new stage guarantees. The hope remains that, in time, people will recreate these values under new conditions, however equally conducive they may not always be.
Dr. Adam Sobota - a leading Polish historian and expert on photography, curator of the photography collection at the National Museum in Wroclaw, author of excellent studies, articles and books "Nobility of Technique. Artistic Dilemmas of Photography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" (2001), "Conceptuality of Photography" (2004), catalog of the collection of the National Museum in Wroclaw "Photography" (2007). Author of numerous exhibitions.
Jerzy Wierzbicki (1975) - documentary photographer, author of albums Gdansk Suburbia i Sultanate of Oman. He has been associated with the Middle East for years. Works in the collections of, among others: National Museum in Gdansk, National Museum in Wroclaw and Art Museum in Lodz. Currently a lecturer in photography at the Scientific Collage of Design in Oman.
We wrote about his Silesian melancholy in Wierzbicki's photography HERE, while about Indian workers in the Middle East HERE
Jerzy Wierzbicki's photographs are available for purchase at KF Gallery