Exhibition of one work in the window of a Gallery Kantorek
Optical darkroom experience is an absolutely primordial form of photography. The light coming through a small opening in a darkened room allows one to observe on the walls of the room the sight of what is in front of it. This experiment repeated several times over always gives the impression of touching something elusive, a seemingly simple visualization of the laws of physics has an element of some mystery. A view projected on the wall of the camera obscura can be captured on photographic paper. The simplest form of a camera is a light-impenetrable box with a light-sensitive material inside. In 2004, at the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz, I realised a project in which I used a camera made from a waste container to photograph a now defunct window in one of the small rooms on the first floor of the gallery. The „Looking for Fox Talbot” project was dedicated to the 19th century pioneer of discoveries in photography. In this project I emphasized the importance of the negative as the primary reference point for abstraction in photography. The curatorial project „Slowness of Events”, realised in 2010 at the Leon Wyczółkowski Regional Museum, also covered the issues of optical darkroom. During the exhibition we presented a model of camera obscura, which in addition to the function of teaching, explaining the phenomenon, was used to make another photograph, from a three-year project to be spread over the period of the project „Looking for Fox Talbot”. The photograph showed one of the windows of the Museum.
This time, a similar activity will be carried out at the Kantorek Gallery — its location in front of the building of the Regional Museum makes it a perfect place to shoot the front wall with a part of the Gdańska street. The premise is that the Kantorek Gallery will play the role of a camera and will be used to take a photograph the size of the gallery’s window. The resulting work will be presented inside the gallery. The photograph will then „attack” passers-by like a billboard, and the mysterious camera obscura will be shared even with accidental passers-by.
Bydgoszcz, June 2013
Marek Noniewicz
opening of the exhibition: 17.07.2013, 6pm
Action funded by the City of Bydgoszcz (artistic scholarship).