Mariusz Hermanowicz and Wojciech Prazmowski
A VISIT - photography
Lithuanian Photographers Union' Gallery, Vilnius
June 10-30, 1998
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E CAN find similiar themes and inspirations in photographic works of many artists. Wojciech Prazmowski and Mariusz Hermanowicz do make, in spite of living hundreds kilometers away from each other, works that have very special connection between them. The both artists are interested in the past what may seem quite natural in the case of photography, but this past in their photographic pictures is being recalled anew.
In Prazmowski's pictures the old photographs he has found are being recomposed thanks to the technique of collage creating thus completly new realisations.
Hermanowicz on other hand introduces the mood of passing using carefully chosen captions or short commentaries to his photographs of sometimes quite contemporary fragments of reality. So this returns to the past and reinterpreting it again and again is a sort of paying a visit to the recesses of our memory. Both artists relate to symbolic places of their childhood.
Mariusz Hermanowicz in his series "10 Years" pays a visit the town of his school days. He goes with us through the streets, squares and parks he knows well and which did not take patina at all. Most probably they look like they used to look years ago - it is only the conscious act of recording and the commentary written with artist's own hand that take them to the land of mercilessly going away past. In the series "Anyway it is hard to erase all traces of the past" he photographs simple objects that already have lost their useful functions. These objects when photographed become symbolic traces of human existence. Covered with sand or overgrown with grass they fight hopelessly to survive in our memory.
Wojciech Prazmowski in his series "Visit to the Museum" presents busts of the famous and learned ones pulled out of their museum environment, put in a surrealistic way on some village road. They freeze the time, they remind us about the past and they take us back to this past again. In another picturethe fragments of monuments disappear in a dense brushwood. Another photograph from the series "Antique Storehouse" shows a boy in festive attire whose image penetrates into classical Greek torso of a young man - another words the fragility of the image confronted with illusive matter of a stone ... something that was long ago taken again into the past, still more immemorial.
This change of time levels in the work of the both artists is constant and consious measure taken by them in order to penetrate the past in a special way - not only the distant past but also this past which defines our own personal memory. This is a kind of paying a visit in situation in which everything is already written down and laid on in succesive layers of images, symbols and meanings. The artists facilitate us reaching the strata of our memory obliterated by the pressure of events of the current commonplaceness. They uncover for us the rich world of the bygone things and invite us to pay a visit to what is being slowly annihilated by the mercilessly passing time.
Marek Grygiel
June 10, 1998, Lithuanian Photographers Union' Gallery in Vilnius, opening of the VISIT exhibition. From left to right: Alvydas Lukis, Marek Grygiel, Irena Rocyte, Regina Sulskyte, Antanas Sutkus, Wojciech Prazmowski, Tadeusz Molczanowicz, Mariusz Hermanowicz, Jonys, Alina Zvirgzdas, Lucja Molczanowicz, Romuald Mieczkowski, Stanislovas Zvirgzdas.
Mariusz Hermanowicz, from series "10 years"
Once I was a little child . I used to play on the grass under these trees. It seems they haven't changed at all.
Mariusz Hermanowicz, from series "10 years"
Mariusz Hermanowicz, from series "10 years"
Wojciech Prazmowski "All Souls Day", 1994
Wojciech Prazmowski "Children's amusements", 1987"
Wojciech Prazmowski "Photo with attribute", 1990
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