Pozytyw Magazine | Interview
Striving For Perfection
By Krzysztof Miekus
What led you to join Photoby agency?
I was searching for an agent. The photographer, Igor Omulecki, suggested that I should meet Tomasz Pasiek, the founder of Photoby agency. Tomasz and I found mutual ground and decided to work together. 'Photoby' is a dynamic agency, filled with enormously talented people, to all intents and purposes for excellence.
To what extent an agency can be useful for a photographer?
Being in an agency gives an ability for the photographer, to focus more on his craft. An agency represents the photographer by these essential means: Finding a suitable market, promoting his work, searching for potential clients, negotiating, and identifying opportunities for potential work. Nevertheless, aiming for these targets is part of the basic teamwork, between the agency and the photographer.
I've heard you finished a photographic school in the Netherlands. Tell me more about your photographic education.
In 1996, inspired by Dutch painting, I began my photographic education at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in the Hague the Netherlands. At the same time, I assisted Dutch photographers in various disciplines, among others the fashion photographer Wendelien Daan. Parallel to my 3rd year of study I began working as a freelance photographer for a number of Dutch magazines such as Carp, NIW, and the music magazine OOR. In Carp magazine, I got my first chance. That period marked for me the path to portrait photography.
Wendelien Daan's photographic approach seems very different from yours. On the other hand, I know that assisting is part of a photographer's education. How was this experience (assisting) useful for you?
In that period, I had an interest also in fashion photography. Assisting Daan was a natural step to do. I have begun learning the significance of studio work. I found her images fascinating. I was driven by her aesthetics and the search for perfection. The way she tucked into the subject matter was new to me. The fact that I began working for her while gradually she began entering the local market, and later on into the International arena, enabled me to witness part of her growing process. Technically and artistically. It was more than a useful experience. It was like a trip to the moon. Particularly when being a student. The Academy was sort of a hothouse. Assisting gave me a broader perspective on this profession. Finally, I could see there are boundaries to be broken. Also, it brought me to the notion that I no longer want only do fashion photography, realizing the need to tuck into subjects that mattered to me, interpersonal relationships. After experimenting in studio conditions, I went outside and experimented with existing light. This element appeared more and more dominant in my pictures. This experience was the beginning of extending the relationship between the people, the surroundings, to my new intentions. From that moment, a new approach gradually was developed and it had to be extant (not lost or destroyed), even when, in times, fashion photography was the subject.
You mentioned Dutch painting. Did you want to become a painter? Which painters precisely inspired you?
I had no intention to become a painter. Nevertheless, the painting was an external stimulation. I was simply intrigued by the Dutch painting. Soon I became a regular visitor to the 'Mauritshuis' - The Royal Dutch Cabinet of Painting in The Hague. There, I developed an awareness of the role of scenery, color, shadow and light, which figured very largely and clearly distinguished in Vermeer's paintings. Soon, I was intrigued also by Isaac Israels's portraits. Overwhelmingly observed the way he painted through his model’s characteristics and psychological tendencies.
How do you react when people say your pictures make think about Lorca diCorcia?
Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an inspiration to many young photographers and will be for generations to come. I was inspired by his conceptual directed scenes. By his enormous capability to visualize, every detail in advance. The same I was inspired by photographers who I consider in a similar sub-discipline, such as Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman. There is only one photographer whose name is Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Observing his work and experimenting, in the same discipline, was part of the search for my own approach.
It seems that you have great reverence for him! Do other photographers inspire you as well?
Indeed, I do hold his work in reverence. His work was, for me, a milestone. Another photographer that I highly respect his work, is my former teacher, Vincent van de Wijngaard, Documentary Photographer. By creating much of a sensory storm, his images become immortal. Vincent has exposed me to the race after stubbornly for high standards of performance. To go out there and take pictures. Practice and do it again and again, till it comes out right. And when there is no money left for film, to sit and sketch the next photos, ideas that are about to be done.
Is your approach similar to his? Do you stage a quasi-documentary story? Or is it a pure documentary? Is it pure fiction?
I do not know if I can describe my approach as similar to his. In both, generally speaking, there is a clear intention to examine the complexity of the human condition. However, it derives from a different core. From the point of view of techniques, the complexity of diCorcia’s work takes much of the cinematic approach. He works in detail. It is a discipline where I do find inspiration. However, I maneuver within improvisation. Both in my publications and autonomous work, I work between 'staged photography' and 'realism'. I compose a situation, which I encountered in the street or somewhere else, and try to reconstruct a fragment of that condition in the sitter’s state of mind. I photograph ordinary people. Though I direct them, the emotions they reveal in front of the lens are their own. In a certain aspect, the elements of the documentary exist. Part of my work is trying to give some tone to real faces in an illusory world. In other parts, there is an attempt to eliminate the trickery and narrow much as possible the viewer's distant experience.
What do you mean by saying "eliminate the trickery and narrow much as possible the viewer's distant experience"?
Getting the viewer to come closer. Cause him/her an emotion.