© Marek Po?niak: Berlin-Schöneberg, 1994
Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST Fasanenstr. 69, 10719 Berlin Allemagne
As we recall, “You press the button, we do the rest” was the advertising slogan when - over a century ago - Georg Eastman, the founder of the Kodak Empire, simplified photography so that even laymen could arrive at reasonable results. Since then, photography has experienced a complex development: both technically and with regard to the aesthetics of the image. In the meantime, analogous processes are being replaced by digital. In relation to this, Marek Pozniak took a voluntary step back into the photographic Stone Age when he began to take pictures with an English amateur camera, probably dating from 1896/97. For this “black box”, and here the term applies literally, has none of those technical provisions which are now part of standard equipment. It has no range-finder, no alterable apertures, the shutter only permits a choice between permanent opening or momentary exposure, and the optics… well, by today’s standards, they would not even deserve the name.
© Marek Poźniak: New York - Coney Island
But nevertheless, this camera delivers some fascinating pictures - not automatically, cameras have never been able to do that, but in the hands of Marek Pozniak. These, of course, do not produce the photographs, but his imagination and his aesthetic ability to anticipate. This is true of the long-term exposures of interiors as well as of the exterior shots, exposed for a shorter time. Basic experience from the history of images is manifest, both in the vertical format interiors, which incline towards abstraction, and in the oblong format outdoor shots, which are organised in a perspective manner: whilst the vertical format with its demarcation at the sides has a tendency to capture restriction and the erect, such as standing human figures, in a symbolic way, we connect a notion of distance with the horizontal format, something which has become familiar, even second nature to us from landscapes seen as sweeping natural spectacles. The development of the negatives, which consciously aims for a grainy quality and contrast, and the subsequent enlargement on silver-chloride paper lend the motifs a patina which appears old, well-suited to the historical technique. Or, to put it another way, the appearance eclipses any precise classification in time. Are the photographs from a period in the past? However, if that is the case, why this familiar urban architecture, why these familiar everyday objects?
© Marek Poźniak: London - Bridge
In this way, although he makes part of his living using the most modern digital technology, Marek Pozniak opposes, on the one hand, the technological fetishism of our age with its high-tech apparatus and new digital production and processing of images, and on the other hand – and this is more significant - he underlines his unqualified faith in the magic of old, analogous photographs. The motifs taken outdoors in the city - in the spirit of street photography, as the distinctive feature of one series - and the motifs resulting from long-term exposure in publicly accessible interiors all demonstrate an irritating, antiquated nature. However, this is broken in the familiar, modern forms of the architecture and the appearance of the street, people’s clothing or objects. It is true that the modern world is concealed behind the antiquated here, but it still remains clearly recognisable. It is Marek Pozniak’s individual photographic viewpoint, in connection with the old photographic technique, which makes the past rise up in the present, and which causes a new reality to emerge; a reality which has never been seen before – a photographic reality rousing associations, organised in an aesthetic and therefore artistic way. (Enno Kaufhold)