Minimalist Still Lifes I In the Studio with the Polish Photographer Pawel Żak
“For me it’s more important to show inner picture that I got in my mind than to describe reality.”
✴ Pawel Żak — contemporary photographer — opens the doors of his studio in Warsaw, Poland. Watch to discover his timeless still lifes featuring ordinary objects in minimalist, sophisticated and mysterious compositions...
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✴ Pawel Żak — contemporary photographer — opens the doors of his studio in Warsaw, Poland. Watch to discover his timeless still lifes featuring ordinary objects in minimalist, sophisticated and mysterious compositions...
Artistics is a Paris-based contemporary art gallery which operates mainly online. We are a team of passionate professionals driven by the thrill to discover new talents and to share their art with you!
Want to see more from Artistics?
Never miss a new studio visit! Subscribe here: https://bit.ly/3XkpSJb
Buy unique artworks on our website: https://bit.ly/3JovXP6
To receive our bimonthly newsletter, subscribe here: https://bit.ly/3qLvZdi
Follow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/43RAWjB
Like us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/448ROSG
Transcript
00:00 I'm Paweł Żak, based in Warsaw, Poland. I'm a photographer, or to be more precise,
00:14 maybe I should say I'm a visual artist working with photography, and I'm also a
00:20 teacher of photography. I started to use photography more than 30 years ago when
00:26 I was a student, and at the beginning it was like usual, taking pictures of friends,
00:34 taking pictures of beautiful landscape and so on, but after some time I saw
00:39 that for me it's more important to show inner picture that I've got in my mind
00:45 than to describe reality, and that's how it started. It was still in this time
00:50 when we all used analog materials, negatives, slides and so on, and I
00:57 started with negatives, with black and white, and soon I saw that taking
01:05 picture is just the beginning, and the negative is like a score maybe, and the
01:11 final result is the print. So I was working quite a lot in my darkroom,
01:17 trying to find a way to make this what I wanted to be visible in a picture, not
01:26 only the things, but the mood.
01:31 The first important series of my work was Tales, that I started in 90s, and I
01:43 received a very important prize, important for me, a pre-blanc color de la
01:49 lumière in Switzerland, and from this I should say this my career started.
01:57 There was a lot of exhibition of this series, and soon I published my first
02:03 book called Tales. For me this series Tales is like a diary of these years
02:10 when I was working on it, because it was time when my first child was
02:16 born, and it was also time when I had an opportunity to remind how it was when I
02:21 was a kid. So that's why I use these toys, these little things, describing my inner
02:29 world and my inner child.
02:36 So the other series that I want to tell you about is Still Lives, which was
02:41 published in a book, and other still lives, and it's based on one set table,
02:47 white cloth, and a space that could be anywhere, and there are things that are
02:53 showing on a table, and they are not intended to show what's going on a table,
03:00 but rather what's going on around the table among people that are gathering there.
03:07 [Music]
03:34 Now I'm working on a new series of work, it's connected with sky and its
03:40 photographical representation. It also has like intended as a more like
03:48 symbolic meaning of the sky, and I work digitally, but I work hard in my studio
04:00 to receive result I need without digital manipulation.
04:07 [Music]