2010 - in the process / holography
Reality does not exist objectively, as a sum of indisputable entities and phenomena. Somewhere in the back of our minds, everyone has the ideal of objective reality embedded, but it is more than anything else a matter of belief. The perception of time and its passage is also a matter of subjective observation—the perception of a person is shaped by their individual physiology of perception, their predispositions, and what has shaped them, that is, the past.
Past events and micro-events, however, do not blur into the past and are not completely forgotten. Even if it seems so at first glance, every event shapes the individual like one of many drops of water wearing down a stone.
Memory is even more subjective than the perception of reality "here and now." Perception is a filter that differentiates the importance of events. Objects, events, places, people, and the individual features of all of them together are, for each person, an infinite number of colorful pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, in constant motion—it is impossible to capture all the nuances of the rapidly and continuously changing forms. Each person will see/interpret/remember a different detail, a different configuration of colors and forms, and the very feeling of this phenomenon will be conditioned by who this person is and what has shaped them.
The perception of reality is a continuous session in a Platonic cinema where each viewer sits alone, from beginning to end, in their designated room. Confronting what one sees with the ideal of objective reality is impossible. We constantly chase after seeing things as they are, receiving in return an intersubjective reality, which is the average of individual observations confronted in acts of communication. However, the imperfection of language means that what is said is a minority compared to what, due to this imperfection, must remain unspoken.
Every word is a symbol of an object or phenomenon, constituting a single word's abbreviated average of many individual experiences. The word-symbol is also the only point of contact between individuals, closed and alone within the boundaries of their "I." Saying "red" finds a common point by understanding the word, yet we are divided by what is unspoken, that is, individual memories, associations, and the act of recalling one's experience of redness.
Just like memory, forgetting is also an essential process of shaping the "I" through experiences. Memory and forgetting shape our memories and the angle of individual perspectives of time.
The passage of time is as subjective an experience as the use and understanding of language. There is a common timeline, on which successive minutes, hours, days, and years are marked, so that, closed in our own experience of the passage of time, we can find each other on a common scale. It is a truism that time and passing concern everyone and everything. As time passes and we experience it, we see and feel changes within ourselves and the reality around us. The process of developing and acquiring new experiences is, for each individual, both becoming and passing away.
The scale of the process of passing, from appearance to disappearance, varies for different entities. “If I were a dog, I would be ten years old now,” says the character played by Marcin Świetlicki in the movie "Małżowina". What would his age be if he were a building or a feeling? When photographing places that have not changed since I have known them, I am indeed wondering to what extent they have changed since I first encountered them and why I see no difference between "then" and "now."
Photography, like all other forms of art, is even more subjective than perception itself. The frame, technique, and way of processing a photograph, along with the author's commentary and intention, are not so much a slice of reality presented for interpretation, but an interpretation in itself, presented for further interpretation. Photographing places that, for me, remain unchanged is a confrontation of my memory, perception, experience, and experiencing of these places with the means of expression that I have at my disposal through photography.
Looking at these places here and now, a moment ago, yesterday, a week ago, ten years ago, and in childhood, I feel as if I am sitting in a train moving endlessly from the same station, only it is not the train that moves but the whole world around it. Looking at things I see as remaining unchanged since I remember them, I feel an unbearable split between the sense of security resulting from their stability and the anxiety resulting from how quickly they change while, in my eyes, they remain the same.