Advice

Beginning of December, bright day, garden filled with light and I am selecting images for my second exhibition in three months.

Portraits of so many people I photographed over so many years are spread out and stories about them flood my mind. All those brief encounters (always unique for me), those first impressions, which I was turning into timeless images...... I remember every detail; the mood, the conversations, the intensity of two personalities facing each other.

When I was taking photographs of Andrzej Wajda in the National Museum, in the middle of Kraków, he pointed at a visual inspiration for his films: a vast painting of wildly running horses pulling a sledge. Since that moment I cannot think about them in any other way. Later, when we stopped on a little square, where I used to live in Kraków, Wajda told me never to postpone, what I really want to do in life, but get on with it as soon as I can.

“Don’t store your Best Idea for later. Use it now, because in time you will have an another Best Idea”.

Years later he filmed some scenes for “Katyń” on the same square.

A sunshine shone on a portrait of Tade Kantor, a painter, a stage designer and an archetypal artist.

This one I took in his gallery, where he also staged experimental plays. Sharp, direct light outlined his profile.

I liked Kantor a lot. I liked that he was both a showman, an intense performer, but still an intriguing painter who had “a perfect visual pitch”, if one can say it like that.

“If you are at one with your audience and you are true to yourself, you will be alright”

Now, I am the same age as Wajda and Kantor were, when I had photographed them. Sometimes I repeat their advice to others, sometimes I repeat their advice to myself, when falling asleep or making plans for the future. Well, today I am only choosing images for the exhibition. Some other day I may need to make a life changing decision, but their words will help me to move forward.

Maybe they also learned these thoughts from others, I don’t know.

“Advice is at the core of creative society. It is like a well of wisdom, but it is up to every individual person to drink from it in the time of need” a friend of mine told me, while we were drinking wine in his shelter, a tiny room on the sixth floor of the squatters house, in Amsterdam, on a freezing day in December some time ago.

Black and White photographs: camera Pentacon Six

Portrait of myself camera Nikon F75