Photography is the medium that sometimes makes it possible to see the "invisible." That this is really the case is proven, for example, by the photographic experiments of a century ago initiated in the circle of the famous theosophist Helena Blavatsky. Thus, photography can touch the realm of the suprasensory and depict that which is extremely rare and only known to some.
Looking at the works of the Jelenia Góra-based artist Ewa Andrzejewska, it is not difficult to resist the impression that their atmospheres are balancing just somewhere on the borderline between java and dream. At the same time, after all, they are also designations of the real world that surrounds her during her wanderings through mountains, city streets, riverside meadows. And that the path she has been consistently following for years is a straight line, one can convince oneself by shifting in front of the eyes successive images fixed in the form of "sepia" frames selected from the environment.
In modern life we are assaulted by an excess of images produced by ever more advanced visualization techniques. Traditional "contact" photography favored by Ewa Andrzejewska appears almost exotic in a world overloaded with colorful images. It attracts attention with its distinctiveness and the story contained in them. Although the artist's favorite subjects are mountains and vedutas, the main character of her photographs remains Time. This is by no means about the fluid matter of everyday life, but about the category of eternity - one whose presence is remembered and known, although this is not the scale by which average human existence is measured. The artist's secret remains the ability to accommodate in small spaces, all the majesty and splendor of duration.
Taking sepia photography is sometimes considered nowadays as a sentimental turn to old fashions. In the case of Ewa's works, reaching for the classic technique of photography, aims to achieve an effect through which the image contains much more than can be known through the senses. Monochromatism appears here as a kind of abbreviation of visible reality. It is a kind of "common denominator." Plants, water, even architecture - are reduced to the same range of colors. A bridge over a river somewhere in the Sudetic Foothills, Rogalin oaks at dawn, the silence of Purple Lake in the Janowickie Ore Mountains, or a city street with a puddle in which the sun is reflected - we have it all depicted monochromatically, as in the paintings of Joos de Momper. The sea also appears in her works, although rarely. It fills three quarters of an undersized photogram, and using the aforementioned range of color, the artist here contains an image of the entire world. Looking at it, one sensually feels the warmth of the slightly wrinkled surface of the water. One can fly above it without fear that the sun, invisible in the frame, might melt the wax in the wings. Looking into the distance above the horizon line, one awakens the desire to sail far away, even to Alexandria... The sea as a road, as a mirror of the sky and an element filled with the energy of the highest being - all ingeniously contained in a small format. The stony silence of the "Black Pond" in the Tatra Mountains is irresistibly associated with sound. The composition of the contours of the rocks juxtaposed with the brightness of the sky reflected in the smoothness of the water, evokes the sound of an aria conducted from above the peaks in a clear and bright voice. This "music of the spheres" is repeated in many of Ewa Andrzejewska's paintings, although there is most often a whisper - not a shout of contour, color or even voice - but precisely a whisper full of admiration for the visible world, the rhythm of lines, chords of shades.
Even in urban landscapes, people do not appear in Eve's work. She avoids figures as staffage denying the great "Time." Instead, buildings become in the artist's vision almost organic creations, subject to its action, much more so than walls of rock. Flows the river of time through the streets of the city, washes away the cornices from the facades and knocks down the attics... It is a serene parable about the passing of time without unnecessary questions about our - human, all too brief stay here. Sometimes the traces of the presence of "temporary" entities inhabiting the space are cars. In Ewa Andrzejewska's photographs you can sometimes see their rusty hulls - these are among the few traces of human presence. They somewhat resemble sinister specters surrounded by a heavy silence. Like traces of some collective trauma, they stand gathered in hasty departure. The motif of railroad rails, which appears in the photograms, takes on somewhat disturbing connotations. It is a promise of remoteness - a razor blade slipped by the sun.
The artist's favorite time captured in her frames is dawn - ambiguous and understated. Full of magnetism, the images linger around - regardless of the presence of human beings. What seems to be a phenomenon is the photographer's ability to penetrate into the essence of the objects and landscapes depicted - sensing "their" seasons, the day and discovering the soul, as in one of the latest series "with meadows", where the silence of the grass seems almost audible....
In the collection of the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin is a seventeenth-century painting by Willem Kalf depicting, perhaps seemingly banal, but of great painterly beauty, a still life with intriguing two Chinese figures descending from the face of a teacup. Realism combined with mystery, imbued with the essence of beauty, seems surprisingly consistent with the impression made by the images of the Jelenia Góra-based photographer. If we didn't know each other personally, I could probably imagine her as a "vermeer" girl pouring milk in concentration. It's hard to take your eyes off her, just as it's hard to pass indifferently by Eve's small-format photos. The world shown in them is not always beautiful, although Ewa always shows it beautifully. Ewa Andrzejewska's presence creates a legend of the place where she lives - her walks with her dog by the river, her presence at vernissages, circulating at dawn through the city's backstreets... I recently saw her new photo with daisies. It was a whole field of flowers - like lights amidst the dark grass covering the entire hill. This spring looked like a procession of souls going to the hereafter - especially since the photo was probably taken before dusk. Such a time - no longer "here", and not yet "there". Eve "caught" in this frame the whole ambiguity of the scene: spring, passing, the current of time at the moment of "transition". In traditional culture, such moments were always encased in magic. It's a bit like someone photographing a specter at a séance at Blavatsky's. These photographs, however, are spectral....
Ewa Andrzejewska, 1959-2017 Graduate of the Higher School of Photography of the Ministry of Culture and Arts/ZPAF in Warsaw. Member of ZPAF. Together with Wojciech Zawadzki she ran the Korytarz Gallery and the Higher School of Photography in Jelenia Gora.
Henry Dumin, born 1958, Jelenia Góra resident; ethnologist; creator of the Program for the Protection of Cultural Traditions; co-founder of the association "Silesia Europaea"; numerous publications on tradition, culture and theater.
The article appeared in issue 10 of "Photography Quarterly". w 2002
Ewa Andrzejewska's photographs can be purchased in our Store