Waldemar Sliwczynski is known for his affection for photography, mainly through his self-published "Kwartalnik Fotografia.". We met, by the way, at the birth of the magazine, in the creation of which I decided to become involved, and this shared adventure continues to this day.
Sliwczynski is a rare photography enthusiast who has taken the risk - including financially - of creating an ambitious magazine for connoisseurs and lovers of photography - not only contemporary photography, which is the only one in Poland that has not allowed itself to be commercialized, devoured by advertising and uniquely persists against the ruthless, bloodthirsty rules governing the publishing market. If you add book publications and catalogs devoted to photography, it is without any exaggeration the most important Polish publishing house of this profile in the last decade, based in the small Wielkopolska town of Września, not in any of the large cities teeming with cultural life. "Kwartalnik" was, from the very beginning, a magazine open to foreign photography - and, importantly, also to that beyond the eastern borders; both as far as artists are concerned, as well as the criticism there, or reflection on the medium itself.
Sliwczynski's publishing activity is, of course, a direct result of his own creative activity. This activity is less well known, if only because the author himself does not particularly seek publicity, most likely content with the joy derived from the act of creation and the inner satisfaction with the results obtained. Taking a closer look at his achievements, it is not difficult to notice phases of fascination and inspiration from other artists, which he adapted for his own needs. His latest realization, entitled "Silence," is undoubtedly already a fully mature, individual creative statement. It does without revolutionary formal and content dogmas; it is a pure quintessence of the human struggle with time and the artistic struggle with silence. Silence is a score spread over many years of creation. It is a project that Waldek started in 2000, and will be released this year (2008); although I don't think the author will completely abandon the subject in the future.
The large-format camera was, and probably will remain for a long time to come, the uncrowned queen of photography. To really understand this phenomenon, you have to try it yourself at least once. For some, it is an indispensable technical tool that allows photographing professional subjects - mainly architecture; for others, the decisive factor is the size of the negative that allows realizing multi-meter enlargements (such as the whole Becher school). A large negative also allows you to make miniatures, or contact copies, giving a hallucinogenic impression of communing with magic. But there are two more - less well-known and described advantages flowing from the very fact of using such a tool: a deep inner experience of the essence of time, and an almost shamanistic ritualistic quality to the whole process of preparing the equipment and taking photographs. First of all, such a potential photograph must first be felt with one's whole being, and not just seen with the eyes. In a word, it is a transition from the real world - the world of reflexes - to the spiritual world, to which human (chronometric) time has no access. In this way, we can try to record permanence, and not just photograph, reflect or "clone" something. This whole procedure of unfolding the tripod and mounting the camera has something of a mantra in it, which helps liberate the soul from the stream of flowing time. It is then easier to manifest l'esprit de lieux, which can be attempted to encapsulate in one and only one photograph. Those few pounds of equipment on a tripod and a black cloth on his head are the least aggressive of the ways of photography, allowing the artist to penetrate through the epidermis of things and objects towards the essence of all things, which is contained in silence. What the photographer needs most is to achieve a state of transparency, a harmony of existence between himself and the outside. Someone who can achieve a similar state will always make excellent photographs, even if there was seemingly nothing in them. Transparency has always been the power of mystics and allowed them to communicate with the most exotic communities and pass through hostile spaces. In the end, transparency also allows our revelation - Satori - to seep into the image, which from now on will bear witness to our presence in the world, our relationship to it and any physical and spiritual connection to it.
When Waldemar Sliwczynski decided to photograph rural architecture in Greater Poland in 2000, it was not, I think, pure coincidence. I don't know what was the first impulse: the fact that Nobel Prize winner Władysław Reymont had his estate in Kołaczkowo in the Września district, or the fact that the 100th anniversary of the first edition of the Peasants; or perhaps both? The fact is that even a cursory reading of Waldek's photos should suggest a similar association. Waldek invites us to take a look at what is happening in the countryside a hundred years after the Peasants. It has to be said that this is a village somewhat out of a distorted mirror: extinct, abandoned, ruined. Agony and emptiness as if straight out of Becket's Waiting for Godot. Waldek has taken on a thankless subject: the banality of these abandoned farms and closed PGRs is familiar to anyone who has ventured at least once into the Polish countryside. Utility and functionality have been important in these buildings since their creation, and their photogenia facades are rather alien. And it is from this weakness that Waldek has made the strength of his series. Laboriously, over the years, photographing at different times of the year, he created a work as monumental and wearying as that of our Nobel laureate. Only that in Sliwczynski's work everything is without traces of life, dead, and the question comes to mind: why haven't we starved to death yet? All these impassive and indifferent farms, stables and barns - like temples for already eaten animals - and now consumed by our eyes in a mass of similar ones, drowned in the boundless silence of duration begin to scream in us with the silence of horror, horror and despair : what have we done with our land? Where are we heading?
On top of all this is the awareness of the tool used. The choice of a large-format camera was imposed by the subject itself. The methodical, repetitive manner of photography and similar distance, unify these images all the more in a community of silence. Color would be an unnecessary anecdote here, as these images emerge from the zone of shadow, which by its very nature has no color of its own. The more shadow the deeper the silence. For centuries, light has symbolized enlightenment and the path to God. Today - where there is a lot of light - there is only noise, bustle and a cacophony of sounds.
The article is an introduction to the book Waldemar Sliwczynski, Silence, Kropka Publishing House, September 2008. The paper version of the book has been out of print for a long time, but it can be purchased from our Store as a pdf. Author's prints from the book are also available for purchase