happy B-Day Jeanne

exhibition: Identity Proofs - scene 2

Anyone who comes across Gliwice in April, please be welcome to visit the exhibition I'm opening tomorrow.

Identity Proofs – scene 2

Aneta Grzeszykowska / Joachim Schmid

Identity Proofs is a photographic exposition presenting works of artists dealing with the issue of identity. Four artists were invited to present individual projects at the Art ReadingRoom – new space created next to the Museum in Gliwice. In the first edition, which took place in March, we had a chance to see the works of Dita Pepe and Jerzy Lewczyński.

For the second edition, which will start on April 8^th, we invited a young Polish photographer, Aneta Grzeszykowska, and German artist-sociologist, Joachim Schmid.

The April exposition is supposed to focus the visitors’ attention on the problem of identity perceived through our ‘visual quality’, our personal appearance. Presented will be a series of illusional portraits of non-existent people by Aneta Grzeszykowska. Through digital manipulation of the image, the artist creates fake persons who are very convincing in their detailed appearance. This cycle will be juxtaposed with the work of Joachim Schmid’s, in which, as in most of his creation, he uses found photographs. Old, torn apart studio portraits – probably made for IDs’ – are organized in the way that produces new, double portraits. Combined features of two different people create a disturbing image of some new, unknown identity. Confronting the works of Schmid and Grzeszykowska should arise doubts and destroy our confidence in what and whom we actually see.

letf: Aneta Grzeszykowska, from the series "Untitled People",
rigth: Joachim Schmid, from the series "Photogenetic Drafts"

Bubo bubo

back to back.

how not to make a photograph? hey, watch your back!
http://fotoartaddict.blogspot.com when you enter gallery or a museum with a camera, i'll be after you.

baby blues.

meet Tadeusz and his father /reading 'baby blues', awesome comic, kind of survival guide for young parents/

Inbox: Susanne Willuhn

A while ago we got a mail from Susanne Willuhn with a link to her page with some wonderful photos. We're now proud to be able to show them to you. Enjoy!

"I am an autodidacte and began to take pictures a few years ago as way to express and explore myself.
When asked what my photography is about I usually don't know what to answer. Maybe it is because I don't have any special motives or themes.
For me my pictures are all about my personal daydreams, longings, the memories i like to hold or regain, reminiscences and so on.
My photographic approach is mostly intuitive. It's about the secrets of everyday life as it is in its authentic form, without arrangements or other alterations made for the pictures. I seek to show the potential ambiguity of everyday settings and the spirit of the people involved. Imaginary worlds and shifting moods are meant to become visible."

happy B'day Lina!

can't wait for some grrrrrrrrrrreen...

early spring in Darmstadt/xpro

about the Spring

There will be Spring

Invited guest: Chris Zedano

Chris Zedano: STAPLE STREET
It's a bit cliché, I suppose, to talk about New York City's "characters," but arriving here from South America years ago, I couldn't help but be struck by them -- and drawn to them, performers in particular.
I was also, of course, seduced by the city's landscape, especially a small, quiet, sliver in the heart of TriBeCa called Staple Street, which I came across quite by chance one day.

There’s something about Staple Street that I can’t explain with words. Maybe it’s the narrowness of the street, which makes me feel protected, cut off from the rest of the city; or maybe it’s the arched bridge between the buildings, a sort of monument to urban connection; or maybe it’s the dilapidated sidewalk that always seems on the verge of repair but never quite makes it, a little like some of the performers I met.

The street still has a grimy, industrial, and to me, romantic feel to it despite its proximity to the trendy, high-end real estate that has spread throughout lower Manhattan like an oil slick. The people I met and photographed have maintained a similar integrity, and thus for me, provided a similar romance.
I met artists and eccentrics of all stripes -- dancers, jugglers, actors, magicians, body painters, mimes, card sharks, singers, clowns. They were vibrant, defiant, shy, sad, sly, witty, odd, exuberant, angry, giving -- a perfect representation of the city itself, and of this tiny street that dates back to at least the early 19th century.

Chris Zedano

Images from the project are being exhibited in Fraser Gallery part of the 9th Annual International Photography Competition from March 12th through April 3rd. Pictures from "Staple Street" will also be exhibited at the National Art Club in New York as part of an event that will be held on June 1st 2010.
In Europe: at the Group Exhibition at AFF Berlin - Part of the European Month of Photography Biennial in November 2010.

invited by joanna

Stepan Rudik on World Press Photo

In the last few years we've seen many manipulations on photography that have appeard in the main newspapers in the world, in contests, in exhibitions, albums, etc... it is though the story of political propaganda in past. But now it's even more "common", because it's so much easier to manipulate - just few clicks in the computer.
This year in the World Press Photo Contest was revealed the manipulation. Stepan Rudik, the winner of the third prize in essay in Sport category was disqualified for removing a little object from one of the photos awarded.
Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo said: "After careful consideration, we found it imperative to disqualify the photographer from the contest. The principle of World Press Photo is to promote high standards in photojournalism. Therefore, we must maintain the integrity of our organization even when the outcome is regrettable."
More official info here.
Whole story with an interesting discussion and original picture: here.

Stepan Rudik, from the series "Antisport"

I’ve asked Stepan Rudik few questions about WPP and here are his answers:

j: How you feel about your disqualification? Does this little foot of your stands the level of copy and paste some items, or erasing whole figure we know from the history?

Stepan Rudik: I believe what I did can be equated to retouching, as if it were a defect of a film.

j: I'd like to know your attitude and the way you work. When does the final form (to have it in narrow frames, black and white, grainy, dark and dramatic) of an essay start? While working, while inventing the subject, after all pictures are done - as the final touch?

Stepan Rudik: I understood that I wanted to process the pictures in the way I did when the series was ready and I looked at it as a whole.

j: Which one submission of yours was "Antisport" to WPP contest?

Stepan Rudik: It was for the second time that I submitted to the contest this year.

j: Who are your heros in photography?

Stepan Rudik: Josef Koudelka and James Nachtwey

j: To make "Antisport" was your idea or was it the assignment from some newspaper ? How you find your topics?

Stepan Rudik: The idea was mine. I photograph life, different aspects of life, and I am interested in all subjects except the boring ones.

Stepan Rudik, from the series "Antisport"

invited by joanna

how come we are always late to the party?

Congrats Markus!

 all the best Markus!

Sunflowers for the birthdaychild

Happy birthday Markus!

Anna in the Spaceship

Meeting Maciek Stępiński

Maciek Stępiński, Go with peace (work in progress 2008-2010), Israel

Fblog: What is conceptual art for you? Do you think it is still possible to practice conceptual photography today in the artworld today? There is a lot of searching around the edges of photography in your series “Sans Titre” – these night landscapes; the series very much deals with the differences in the viewing performed by camera, by photography and by humans; this is quite a “conceptual” striving towards the specifics of the medium.

Maciek Stępiński, Go with peace (work in progress 2008-2010), Israel
Maciek Stępiński, Sans Titre, 2007, lambda, dibond plexi, 80x80cm

Maciek Stępiński: At some point, Appolinaire named cubist painting conceptual art. In the 1960s, conceptual art was a response to the aesthetics of minimalism, and was based in the replacement of the art object, by art as an idea. What seems important for me is that it also put all the media of art on the same level. The most crucial element became the process of creating, rather than the effect itself. Has that changed? To what aesthetic trend is contemporary conceptual an answer?

I’m much influenced by Duchamp’s theory, which underlined the important part of chance as a decisive factor in the creative process. And this is photographic thinking. You might even be tempted to make the assertion that to take pictures is to deal with ready-mades. The very important part played by chance and error you may find also in my “Sclerosis” project, some sort of a ready-mades collection. The neon – “Idea” was the opening object of the exhibition in the Leto Gallery, Warsaw. The work consists of a single word “ideal, but the last letter was “broken” and didn’t come on properly.

Maciek Stępiński, Idea(l), 2009, neon, 125x25x11cm

At one point, I was interested in “meta-art” – as an extreme variation on the idea of conceptual art, created by the Art & Language group. They completely negated the visual side of an art object and concentrated their attention on the theory of art only. That was an interesting collision, because artists became theoreticans. Then, the only difference between them was the motivation, the intentions of their action.

Maciek Stępiński, Sclerosis, LETO gallery, Warsaw (installation view, Idea(l), 2009, neon)

Maciek Stępiński, Sclerosis, LETO gallery, Warsaw (installation view) 2009

I don’t know whether these night landscapes from the „Sans Titre” series can really be categorized as conceptual works, but they may be unconsciously inspired by constructivist and minimalist theories, and you know this square format, could be a straight tribute to Malevitsch…. (laughing). Definitely in this series, what we are dealing with is a searching for the edge of the visible (black), but equally “invisible” are Filip Francis’ “white on white” images or Francois Soulage’s monochromes. Here it was not a question of the specifics of the medium. The main reason to make this series was the dread I was under at that time and an attempt to escape the feeling by dealing with it like this. A part of these night landscapes emerged as preparatory material for large scale oil paintings, which however I’ve never finished.

Maciek Stępiński, Sans Titre, 2007, lambda, dibond plexi, 80x80cm

Fblog: You keep interfering in the photograph, the film or the canvas. In photography you act like a pictorialist – in the terms of Jan Bulhak, but maybe also in the terms of Alfred Stieglitz. You attach great importance to the print, and before showing it of to the world you keep working with it “post factum”.

Maciek Stępiński, Warsaw City Tennis Clubs, 2009, cibachrome 50x60cm

Maciek Stępiński: I guess I do many things uncounciously inspiried by the culture I grew up in. I think of it as a whole, of a unity – constituted by many parts. Anyway I don’t think I’m a pictorialist, or a documentary photographer! To be honest, I’m not inspired (consiously!) by old photography, and the history of photography I know rather superficially. I look at art history, again – as a whole. I do not divide it into techniques, but rather try to find the common ideas that run across it. Movies, music, poetry (lyrics) or even video games and the internet – these are my inspirations. Oh yes, and painting, most of all painting. And once again music.

Maciek Stępiński, W, 2008, lambda,dibond plexi, 80x95cm

This is why I haven’t got much in common with pictorialists such as Marian Dederko (the most important amongst them for me) who invented the “photonit” technique, which was to emphasized a strong retouching of the positive, then a reproduction of that positive and making a new positive from this new contr-negative. Wolfgang Tillmans today works in a quite similar way: enlarging photographs that are photocopies of tabloid and newspaper photographs or showing “wrongly exposed” photographic papers, while making from them other reproductions, changing the form of the prints, etc.

Maciek Stępiński , W, 2008, lambda,dibond plexi, 80x95cm

Maciek Stępiński, Warsaw City Tennis Clubs, Kordegarda 2009 (installation view, WCTC, cibachrome 50x60)

But techniques and technologies (their pros and cons) that’s the final touch. A cibachrome print will look good only if the chrome is well exposed. It’s not as much of a change as, for example, in HDR where the final outcome differs substantially from the original. In the case of “Warsaw City Tennis Clubs” it’s rather the reverse.

The choice of the cibachrome technique was the best to have exactly the same colours as on a diapositive, without lambda profiles, correction by machines or an operator, calibration of the screen, part of the paper or finally the use of chemical materials… Here a great deal was made possible thanks to a great contact and full cooperation with an extraordinary French technical specialist Roland Dufau, who printed in Paris these pictures for the exhibition in Kordegarda, Warsaw. It was the first time I could show prints I’ve always dreamed of showing (thanks to Magda Kardasz – curator at the Kordegarda and Zacheta Galleries) . So, yes, I put a lot of effort into the final print of my pictures, but in order to make them as near as possible to the original (or at least as I remember it (laughing)).

Maciek Stępiński, Paysage Urbain, 1999, C-print, 78x78cm

Fblog: Do you divide somehow your artistic work from your academic concerns? You work in France and Poland. Could you compare these two cultures – as far as we are concerned, i.e. young people approaching art and photography. I’m sure it’s quite different.

Maciek Stępiński: I try to divide these two types of work, but sometimes they interfere with one another and there are influences on both sides. There’s a satisfaction in both of them: meeting people gives a lot of positive energy, their criticisms and doubts about the photographic medium is a sort of encouragement to creative work.

Maciek Stępiński, N-113, 2002, lambda, dibond, 50x50cm

As far as comparison is concerned, I can’t make one regarding education, because I have never studied photography in Poland. Regarding the level photographic education in our country, I get information from friends who teach in Lodz in the “Filmschool” or from students from Lodz, Poznan, or from my students from the Academy of Photography in Warsaw and Cracow. The level of lectures and the equipement used during workshops unquestionably matches that of the top european schools. The difference I see, might lie in the motivation for undertaking such studies.

In countries like Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France, young people are well acquainted with art from the very beginning of their school education. There is undoubtedly a much wider range of schools, with more tightly defined profiles, because they have already been active for many years now. There is a clear division between artistic and technical-commercial institutions. A very big advantage is the scholarship programme, so students may focus on their projects, instead of taking every job possible to pay their rent. But here the main point is still not about money, but about the motivation. In my opinion Poland is going through a time of high and wild consumption, as France was at the end of the 60. That’s why some might perceive being a photographer as a quite easy way to become wealthy fast, through fashion and advertisement photography.

In conclusion, I would say that the Polish contemporary art scene is much more interesting and dynamic than in Paris or Marseille. And though there are ten times fewer people interested and familiar with art as compared to the rest of Western Europe, collectors and art merchants are much more frequent visitors here now.

Maciek Stępiński, LGV 2004, lambda, dibond, 80x80cm

Maciek Stępiński - photographer, painter and video artist, working in France and Poland. interview was made in dec09/jan10 by joanna and was inspired by Maciek exhibition "Warsaw City Tennis Clubs" in Kordegarda gallery, branch of Zacheta in 2009. more info and pictures: http://www.stepinski.com/