Photography
Ever since I renounced drawing, I have been looking for more adequate ways of documenting reality. To me, photography is a way of showing those parts of life that we do not see, all too busy running through life to stop and look. It would be incorrect to say that I photograph nature – and yet surprisingly appropriate. Most of the wonders that draw my attention are man-made: my vision is shaped by big city upbringing that allows seeing natural environment in concrete and metal structures.
I eschew portraiture on purely technical grounds – to document authentic human emotions, one needs equipment powerful enough to escape Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. That is difficult to achieve with a simple point-and-shoot camera or a smartphone stuffed in my back pocket, always available to capture images as they happen in real life. Occasionally, I manage to take a picture of a real person – surreptitiously, with a guilty pleasure of a voyeur, feeling like a thief stealing someone’s intimate moment.
Staged photography involving human subjects, while often visually exceptionally appealing, lacks for me authenticity on a human level. My experiences on the other side of the lens convinced me that in staged photography it is the dynamic between the photographer and the model that is captured, not the personality and independent emotions of the subject. In this way, the photographer manipulates the subject into becoming what the artist desires – not just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. The model becomes the reflection of the photographer, his doppelganger, his more perfect double. The personality of the model is lost on the way, and while one might argue that the artificial creation is more beautiful, to me, it lacks a soul. It seems more honest to use sculpture – one of my favorite forms of art – to alter nature to that extent. But then sculpture requires an entire different level of skill…
Here is a sample of what drew my attention in the last couple of years.
I eschew portraiture on purely technical grounds – to document authentic human emotions, one needs equipment powerful enough to escape Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. That is difficult to achieve with a simple point-and-shoot camera or a smartphone stuffed in my back pocket, always available to capture images as they happen in real life. Occasionally, I manage to take a picture of a real person – surreptitiously, with a guilty pleasure of a voyeur, feeling like a thief stealing someone’s intimate moment.
Staged photography involving human subjects, while often visually exceptionally appealing, lacks for me authenticity on a human level. My experiences on the other side of the lens convinced me that in staged photography it is the dynamic between the photographer and the model that is captured, not the personality and independent emotions of the subject. In this way, the photographer manipulates the subject into becoming what the artist desires – not just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. The model becomes the reflection of the photographer, his doppelganger, his more perfect double. The personality of the model is lost on the way, and while one might argue that the artificial creation is more beautiful, to me, it lacks a soul. It seems more honest to use sculpture – one of my favorite forms of art – to alter nature to that extent. But then sculpture requires an entire different level of skill…
Here is a sample of what drew my attention in the last couple of years.
