Man, an exclusive passion

How does one preserve a grimace? Can a film frame reflect human emotions? How does one portray human character in a photograph? From 10 September the vaults of the Wyspianski 2000 Pavilion will house a collection of portraits of famous Poles painted by an outstanding interpreter of human faces, Krzysztof Gieraltowski.

He was born on 10 August 1938 in Warsaw. Originally, he was supposed to become a doctor (he studied at the Medical Academy); however, eventually he graduated from the Lodz Theatre and Film School. He has been taking photographs since 1961. Almost 5 decades of creative work have born plentiful fruit: numerous exhibitions and cooperation, first with the "Ty i Ja” monthly and then with weekly magazines: “Perspektywy”, “Razem”, “ITD”, and finally with the “6x9 Fotografia” quarterly and “Twój Styl”. Since 1996 he has been living in Warsaw, managing his own gallery.



Gieraltowski – today dubbed an expert in difficult photos of people – started with photographing fashion sessions and black-and-while film. Soon, he also took up portraits. "My willingness to photograph people stems from curiosity and the desire to engage in a game with contemporary individuals. It makes subjective portraits, spotting one trait in a selected person – one impression and that impression is what I strive to visualise", explains the artists. Thirty years passed before he decided to introduce colour into his world – sometimes subtle and other times intense, even energizing. This is where his greatness resides. He does not cling desperately to one method which has proven reliable before. He has a liking for formal experiments. He started with simple cameras. In Switzerland, he was fascinated by the capabilities of a wide-angle lens, later he turned towards larger negatives. They let him offset wrinkles, skin texture or a glint in the eye. These almost anatomic interests are likely to be the upshot of 4 years spent studying medicine. "His analysis of the character is sometimes very advanced and has little to do with external resemblance of the portrait and the model. It seems as if Gieraltowski snatched the model by the collar to force him to shed all camouflage", wrote Bas Roodnat about his work on the occasion of his exhibition in Amsterdam in 1984.

Thanks to many years of his work, he has accumulated over 80 thousand negatives in his collection entitled "The Poles – Contemporary Portraits". The characters depicted in his photos include people of culture, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, politicians and statesmen. Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote about him: "Gierałtowski does not portray people out of the Yellow Pages. He is a remarkable portrait-maker of remarkable Poles. He is one of very few artists in Poland and the world who has dedicated his artistic career to portraits so consciously and consistently. Man is his exclusive passion. And it is not man in relation with other people but in relation to oneself, interesting and important in himself. Thus perceived and set apart from others, this man alone fills the entire picture". This shows in the works displayed in the exhibition. Half of Czeslaw Milosz's face is concealed in shadow. Slawomir Mrozek does not part with his glasses and a denim cap, and the face of Andrzej Czeczot, pressed to a pane of glass, is dominated by his eyes filled with wisdom.

Gieraltowski not so much reflects reality as processes it, pushing it through a filter of his artistic individuality. Through a gaze, countenance, subtly marked grimace, he reveals psychological states, moods and even dreams. He achieves that through exaggeration, lighting, selecting colours, arranging surprising situations and using "magical" items. Like the cloak veiling the face of Michal's son, evoking childhood nostalgia, like the makeshift newspaper carnival mask covering the face of editor Jerzy Baczynski, like the wire construction on the head of banker Marcin Panek, which is not as much a symbol of a cage as of voluntary captivity.

Especially for Krakow's exhibition, he extended his collection adding a new photos. The photographs – commissioned by the Krakow Festival Office – will supplement the collection of the Walery Rzewuski Museum of the History of Photography in Krakow.

The artist opposes superficial realism showing the world as a reality "cut out" with the knife of a shutter. A photographer – as he says – only deserves that name if he is able to interpret reality using photography. In this way he is able to create extraordinary, singular, unique and intriguing portraits, which give us food for thought, making us reflect on what we are and maybe even on what we should be. They indicate an idiosyncratic game of the artist. Ryszard Kapuscinski described it as follows: "Art is a search. Also Gierałtowski's art. His portrait cycles are not a closed whole, as time passes some faces in the collection disappear, substituted by others. These cycles are a living, changing community, constantly verified by Gieraltowski.

It is worth spending a while in front of the "faces" presented in the underground gallery of Wyspianski 2000 Pavilion.

Krakow residents and others – photographs by Krzysztof Gieraltowski, Wyspianski 2000 Pavilion, pl. Wszystkich Swietych 2, level -1, 8 September – 15 October.