Bogdan Konopka 'EUROLAND 24 images'

Bogdan Konopka - Euroland : 24 images
Publisher: Lieux Dits, 4 rue de Nuits, 69004 Lyon
Collection: Le Bleu du Ciel, 10bis, rue de Cuire, 69004
Published in accordance with exhibition „Euroland“,
September 10 - November 13, 2004. at Le Bleu du Ciel gallery.
ISBN 2-913528 07-8, ISSN 1633-4477

Bogdan Konopka
Angers, France / April 7th, 1991
from "Euroland", Galerie Le Bleu du Ciel, 10 rue de Cuire, 69004 Lyon

Invisible

Euroland : 24 images
de Bogdan Konopka, Françoise Paviot (Préface)
Éditeur : Lieux Dits (1 novembre 2004)
Collection : Le Bleu du ciel
Format : Broché - 60 pages
Dimensions (en cm) : 15 x 1 x 19
ISBN : 2914528078

ONLY 24 PHOTOGRAPHS. Only so many pictures in this modest book published on occasion of individual exhibition of Bogdan Konopka in Galerie Le Bleu du Ciel in Lyon. Nevertheless it is not a random choice – and it is not simply a catalogue of the exhibition. This book entitled "Euroland" contains the essence of the series on which Konopka was working since few years wandering about borderland regions of Europe. Thus there are in this collection photographs from Belarus, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Bohemia and also few pictures from France and Switzerland. Each of the photographs is accompanied by precise description of time and place in which particular picture was taken. There is Minsk, Budapest, Prague and Paris but also Łódź, Kaunas, Kutna Hora and Podolinec in Slovakia and Podgorce in West Ukraine.

The artist managed to impregnate these small, carefully composed pictures that are joy for viewer’s eyes with essence of the places and impression of mercilessly passing time. This impression is further emphasized by the high technical proficiency of the artist which Francoise Paviot, who written preface to this book, compares with patience of an engraver who knows how to translate into picture what his camera he is holding in his hands sees. Paviot also turns our attention to a kind of carelessness, freedom that is marking journeys of Bogdan Konopka striving to capture these crumbs of reality which while being in particular moment important for him become - thanks to credibly documentary and true character of Konopka’s work – a testimony to particular place and time. Interesting is that despite such vast territorial range in which these pictures were taken – from big cities to small provincial towns – the viewer has impression that for all that differences they have something in common – some imaginative space evoked by the artist and based on these photographs resembling high quality drawings.

Someone wrote that the most difficult subject to photograph is the invisible one. Despite that Konopka photographs things visible and accessible for the eye he also leaves enough space for broader interpretation of each of his pictures. His pictures contain some invisible, understated and enigmatic thread. Perhaps this is the reason why these discrete, quiet, refined and – it has to be said – beautiful photographs are so strong.

Bogdan Konopka
Oradea, Romania, May 24, 2000
from "Euroland", Galerie Le Bleu du Ciel, 10 rue de Cuire, 69004 Lyon

Bogdan Konopka
Podolinec, Slovakia, April 30, 2004
from "Euroland", Galerie Le Bleu du Ciel, 10 rue de Cuire, 69004 Lyon

Bogdan Konopka signs his book "Euroland - 24 images" at Paris Photo 2004 - Françoise Paviot gallery's stand. November 13, 2004. Fot. Marek Grygiel.

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