The joy of life, or life in various aspects.
Join us for 6 exhibitions and a meeting with photobook authors. From 2. IX. To 31. X. 2024
In just 30 years at the turn of the 20th century, as many as 260 million Chinese left their homes in the countryside for the cities. Photos Mishy Kominka depict the new residents of China's metropolitan areas, whose daily lives run adjacent to noisy construction sites surrounded by a wall of skyscrapers. They wear suits, but also walk the streets in pajamas and bathrobes, reading books, smiling at the lens - on the gentle side of life, beyond the reach of the apparatus of political control, unconcerned about the symptoms of the climate crisis and other modern forms of doom.
What we are looking at in the pictures Izabela Lapinska, is not as obvious as we may think it is. And although she admits that photography has taught her to delight in the obvious, she says: I touch phenomena that I wouldn't dare to physically approach without a camera," she confesses. She photographs bodies - perfect, finely flawed, painful and meaty, she says. Dead, although - surprisingly, but also disturbingly - retaining a semblance of being against the backdrop of the truth about transience, destruction and degradation, absent from the public debate. The innocent eye does not exist, the author says.
The spaces he takes pictures of Tom Swoboda Are evidence of the joy of life being taken away. He is the author of projects with a strange identity, not clearly grounded in art or the wider social space. And at the same time, for several years he has been photographing human-designed living spaces for wild animals, caged nature - still life in Renaissance frames.
Meanwhile, in the gardens of paradise Kris Marchlak inspirations from Baroque painting and classical imagery are evident. The author is interested in the physicality of the body and identity - individual and collective. He directs his tales, treating the photographed people as actors and the accompanying objects as props, in sophisticated sets. In a similar way to a cinematic image, his photographs build atmosphere and evoke a sense of nostalgia.
The joy of experiencing the moment, the need for acceptance and friendship - this, in turn, is the world of child and adolescent play Brand Szyryk, in which, however, unpretentious games of unleashed imagination he contrasts with the realities of the coarse reality of decades ago. Marek Szyryk returns to the past. Juxtaposing its traces with contemporary photographs, he confronts dreams and aspirations with reality and provokes reflection. The moments frozen in the frame create a vision of the land of freedom, happiness and carefreeness, and although they have a personal dimension, they strike a tender universal note.
And from here it's not far to unlimited landscapes Wieslaw Wyjadlowski. His debut exhibition is a play on separating color from the landscape, with the conscious use of photographic error when shooting. The author shares with us his experiences and stories related to the search for beauty in nature.
During the October meetings and their photobooks will be presented by , Prof. Izabela Lapinska, Prof. Marek Szyryk, Prof. Janusz Musial and the Berlin-based Kominek Book publishing house.
More information about the exhibitions and the full schedule is available at festiwalplener.zory.pl