Timescapes
2007
The starting point was provided by the words of John Berger: „It is never the case that the landscape cannot be painted for purely descriptive reasons, it is always so because its sense, its meaning is not visible, or it lies elsewhere.” I asked myself: „where is the mystery of the landscape?” Berger’s hint suggested that it goes beyond what we see and therefore its essence might be hidden in a subjective feeling. Experiencing a landscape is close to a state of reverie, of contemplation. This state is connected with going beyond traditional understanding and experiencing the passage of time. And what if we were to combine memory, perception and expectation? The essence of this project was to go beyond photographing what I see by combining the experience of looking with the record of the state spread over time. Timescapes is not a container for visible things. It is a recorded presence in which „external” remaining time collides with the developed, subjective time of contemplation. Time is synthesizing. Sometimes a fragment remains which should be gone, overlapping the next image that is just taking place. Gerhard Richter in the Landscapes series reproduces photographs - he adds a layer of his own emotions to them, destroying their photographic quality by painting previously photographed images using a traditional painting technique . As for me, the camera did not serve to illustrate what I see, but it became a tool that recorded my presence. I used the camera as a simulation and recorder of my own presence in reality. The place had its own reality, but my presence spread over time changed this reality. The image was no longer proof of the existence of this place. Timescape created a new context.
In this project, I again referred to the performative character inscribed in the process of creating a work that was previously presented in the project entitled, The City, but I was still deepening the intermedia aspect of my work. The series was shown in: Photo Gallery of the Elbląg Library - „Diplomas from Targowa”, Elbląg (2007), in the Mieszczański Brewery - „Versus”, FotoSpace - Wrocław Photography Festival (2007). FF Gallery - Timescapes. Topography of Relations (2010). Works from the Timescapes project are in the collections of Dariusz Bieńkowski.