Widma / Haunts, 2016-2017
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I am taking self-portraits in old photographic studios rediscovering old backcloths. Some of them I have found in the countryside - little village Pępowo, from where I come from, another one - in the center of the city, like in the main street in Poznan.
I am interested in how this few choices of backrounds became universal for many histories of so different people. Usually in the studio there is not so many cloths to choose. You can find the exact backcloth for your purpose, for instance “library” if you graduated (or you pretend to become politician), like also ballroom for newlyweds. But the “library” supports rather obsolete categories, such as Cartesian mind or male domination.
I am spontaneously reacting on the backgrounds, driven by nostalgia to the backclothes coming from transformation time in Poland - 90′, from my current social-class-gender-geographic position as a precarious-living girl artist, pretending to middle class and situated in central Europe. I am asking if the backgrounds in the studios, hundreds or thousands times shaping the portraits are proofs of stagnation in fossil principles and drive people choises or they are just unintended visual anachornisms (some photographers felt embarassed when I asked for this offer)?