Nightwatching 2008-2014

Eyesight is one of the senses that we take for granted but when it starts to deteriorate or disappears altogether, we start to analyse what happened on a more scientific and also personal level. Johannes Kepler, a key figure in 17th century science, presented the first fairly accurate explanation of the working of the human eye. He believed that the image is projected inverted and is later corrected 'in the hollows' of the brain due to the 'activity of the soul'. Newton brutally experimented on himself to discover what in seeing is due to the outside world and what to the mind, the soul and the brain. I too, particularly after a traumatic period when I nearly lost my eyesight in 2006, am interested in discovering the processes that make our bodies function the way they do.

Nightwatching references the distortions in Baroque art, especially the coffin portraits so popular in Polish portrait paintings of that period, and also the ideas of the eye-obsessed Surrealists. Creating this series of photographs was therapeutic, making a positive experience out of the fear of darkness accompanying a loss of eyesight.

Series consists of 22 images, various sizes, Archival Giclee Print on Hahnemule paper

Selection of images, exhibition installation in Daegu Photo Biennale, South Korea and Wozownia Gallery in Torun, Poland exhibition catalogues and a feature in Adam Mazur’s ‘The Decisive Moment. New Phenomena in Polish Photography Since 2000’: