Vernissage: BODYBUILDERS

Curator of the exhibition: Artur Turek

Gallery curator: Arkadiusz Ławaniec

BODYBUILDERS

Witold Krassowski's Bodybuilders is an exhibition about people of ideas. For those who leave behind more than a name. The eponymous Bodybuilders change language, the way of seeing the world, as well as the boundaries of knowledge. Sometimes they do it in front of others, but more often at the desk, in the studio, in focus. It is there that is born that takes on meaning over time.

The author of Bodybuilders photographs non-random people. They are united by the belief that reality is not something explained once and for all. It can be studied, described, challenged, and given new meanings. In this sense, culture becomes a broad concept. It is a space for thinking, creating and knowing, all that expands the field of our consciousness and allows us to see more.

The title itself is a metaphor for a different kind of force. These Bodybuilders do not strain muscles. Their strength matured differently, in work, focus and consistency. Not all of them belong to universally recognizable figures. Some of them remain outside the foreground, although their achievements have long been co-creating reality. And it is here that the right rate of this exhibition is revealed. It is a portrait of people whose importance is measured by what they have contributed to culture, science and our way of thinking.

The series was created for many years, but it acquired special significance at a time when the broadly understood culture became the subject of a fierce dispute in Poland. Attempts were made to order it according to the imposed hierarchies, to indicate the right authorities, to establish what deserves to be remembered and what should remain outside it. In this context, Bodybuilders also gain a dimension of opposition. However, it does not take the form of a manifesto. The author contrasts the order imposed from above with something much more lasting. Culture has its own time, usually longer than the political term. Ideas live longer than the circumstances in which they were created, and a work can survive more than one institution.

Black and white portraits are frugal in form. Photography stops the presence, the face, the gaze, the trace of time. It allows us to face for a moment the person we usually get to know through a work, a theory or a book. The portrait thus allows us to see a man whose achievements we often know better than his face.

From dozens of faces, a portrait of a culture is thus created, which cannot be closed in a single worldview or subordinated to a single story. A culture built from curiosity, knowledge, imagination and discord for intellectual convenience.

Arthur Turek

Witold Krassowski

Documentary photographer has specialized in social issues for more than 30 years. After studying at the University of Warsaw and Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, he obtained a diploma in applied linguistics in 1981, then a doctorate at the Film and Television Faculty of the University of Silesia in Katowice, and in 2012 a habilitation at the Faculty of Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Currently, as a professor, he teaches social photography at the same department.

His photographic work has been widely published in various media throughout Europe. He twice won the World Press Photo Award and sat on the jury of this competition. He was also successful in other photo competitions in Poland, the UK and Iran.

He has exhibited his works in London (Photographers' Gallery), Munich, Cologne, Lisbon, Brussels (Berlaymont House), Kiev, Chicago and Moscow (Multimedia Art Museum). He has also participated in international projects and festivals: Hope Project, Inferno-Paradiso Project, Magic Moments II, Behind Walls Noorderlicht Photofestival and London Street Photography Festival.

To date, he has published five books: Visages de l'Est (1991), Afterlife of Poland (2009), Song to Exit (2011), Still afraid of screaming (2017) and Sackcloth and Ashes (2020).