Shadow – Ritual

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PL

Summer is in progress and you finally go away for a few days to get away from ‘your' firm and the charms of summer in the city. From the slope of a friendly hill, you look at the landscape of your freedom and think how to regain for yourself here the vacation atmosphere and forget about the situation on the employment market. A vacation, even the shortest, is something more than just going away for a break; you can give yourself time to change your route and occupy yourself, for instance, with such an impractical subject as your own shadow. It follows us everywhere where there is enough light. It does not agree upon anything with us; it always appears in, as it were, ready-made form, though obviously it is not an object.

The subject of the human shadow began to circulate in my head as the result of two nearly simultaneous exhibitions of photographs by Janusz Leśniak. Exhibitions in two very different places: one in the Palace of Art in Kraków, and the other in Lanckorona, in a beautiful old cottage bearing the name of Dom Golonki Gallery (the name comes not from the traditional Polish pork knuckle dish, but from a family name). A constant motif in Leśniak's photographs is the author's shadow caught, at the moment the pictures were taken, in the various settings being photographed: elements of the natural landscape, interiors or urban spaces. Sometimes it dominates the picture, other times it is more discreet. This project, which has been in progress since the 1970s, contains a consistency of conceptual strategy, but cannot be locked into it. For the photographs draw one's vision to delve into the sights captured, and the author's shadow recurring in each of them becomes more and more puzzling, even if it is, after all, not anything unusual.

Jerzy Madeyski entitled his interesting text about Janusz Leśniak's photographs with the sentence Humanity is the Shadow of a Dream, drawn from Pindar, accentuating in an intriguing manner the shadow's autonomy. Madeyski also sketched a perspective displaying the contemporary photographer's project as that of conducting a dialogue with culture's deep past. The subject of the presence of shadow in European art is even the main thread of the fascinating book A Short History of the Shadow. Its author, Victor I. Stoichita, an anthropologist of Romanian extraction, begins with Pliny the Elder and carries the story through to analyses of the shadow's relationships with contemporary photography, as well as with the works of such artists as Chirico, Boltanski, Warhol, Duchamp and Beuys. The book permits us to discern transformations in the meanings with which the appearance of the human shadow in works of visual art has been associated. Initially, the shadow was treated as a symbol of the human personality or soul; later, it began to be treated as an alter ego; it also gradually underwent demonization as an expression of autonomous and uncontrolled power, later - in the 20th century - to also become a symbol creating the artist's (not necessarily true) image. The shadow appears to continually absorb a greater variety of content, by virtue of both its visual form and the linguistic expressions in which it appears. However, Stoichita's erudite treatise on the shadow, replete with many threads and reflections, does make us aware that its subject matter still escapes complete reconaissance.

Janusz Leśniak, 1065, Długi Bród 2008
Janusz Leśniak, 1065, Długi Bród 2008

Janusz Leśniak, 3652, Table Mountains 2006
Janusz Leśniak, 3652, Table Mountains 2006

Utilizing the inspiring observations contained in A Short History of the Shadow, one can put together one's own perspective on Janusz Leśniak's photographs and one's own understanding of their effect. The shadow of the photographs' author indicates the presence of a person who is outside the frame and, thus, in reality not registered photographically. It is a shadow simultaneously of the viewer of the situation and of the author of its registration. Beyond this, the shadow is here a symbol of both a concrete subject, and a visual object - almost a ‘thing'. However, these theoretical distinctions are bound together by the fact that each photograph with the author's shadow is a record of the moment of his encounter with the objects that he saw and with how he saw them. This is, as it were, an allegory of what photography is in general and why the effect of Janusz Leśniak's photographs (called simply leśniaks) is stronger when we see them in a larger group. The repetitive character of the shadow motif intuitively reinforces the generalization being made, the recognition of the metanarrative and simply the reminder that every photograph bears the shadow of its author, though it is generally not visible within the frame. Obviously we have known this for a long time; however, the visual experience of this relationship has an element of participation in an artistic ritual which, by repetition, opens up our readiness for transformation of consciousness.

Janusz Leśniak, 7342, Limanowa 2011
Janusz Leśniak, 7342, Limanowa 2011

But a reflection running in the other direction also arises. Each of the photographs, framing a singular moment, emphasizes on a basis of contrast the ephemerality of the sight recorded, as well as the transience of the shadow (and the person) of its observer. What is characteristic here is that this feeling of the ephemerality of the artist's shadow imposes itself more strongly when the shadow is captured in interiors or in an urban space than when it appears in a natural landscape. No doubt here in evidence is an awareness of the impermanence of the products of civilization, though the forms of nature as well are subject to change. In this perspective, the registration of the shadow's projection is a form of time measurement ritual, or a question about the relationship of the record of the moment to its perception.

Janusz Leśniak, 8198, Nowy Sącz 2008, leśniaks-mandalas mandalas
Janusz Leśniak, 8198, Nowy Sącz 2008, leśniaks-mandalas mandalas

For several years now, Janusz Leśniak has also been working on a new cycle of photographs called ‘leśniaks-mandalas'. Utilizing the zooming function while taking a photograph of his own shadow, he, as it were, gives a performance of time decompression. But in the visual layer, a condensation of many images of the same place is formed, creating a new type of pictogram with the symbol of the shadow of a human figure at its center. In them, the shadow is a point of reference and a visual medium - it loosens its connection with its ‘owner' and becomes a ‘pure' symbol. Traditional mandalas are visualizations displaying the manner in which chaos takes on a harmonious form, and their central point is both the beginning and end of the entire layout. Janusz Leśniak's ‘mandalas' are pictograms with meanings open to viewers' associations, thereby permitting them, as in a Rorschach test, to recognize more or less conscious elements of their psyche. In the ‘mandalas', play with shadow gives way to play with symbol. To exaggerate a bit, one could say that the ‘mandalas', in accordance with their name, serve the purpose of therapeutically harmonizing the psyche, while the ‘ordinary leśniaks' lead in the opposite direction - they incite a ferment with the question, ‘What kind of shadow overlays what you see?'

Translation: Cara Emily Thornton

Janusz Leśniak, 0605, Nowy Sącz, 2006
Janusz Leśniak, 0605, Nowy Sącz, 2006

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona, 15-31 July 2012.

Janusz Leśniak, Photography, Palace of Art, Kraków, 26 June-26 August 2012; http://www.obieg.pl/kronika/25694

 

Bibliography:

Jerzy Madeyski, ‘Człowiek jest snem cienia' [‘Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream'], Gazeta Antykwaryczna, no. 11(104) 2004.

Victor I. Stoichita, Krótka historia cienia [A Short History of the Shadow], tr. Piotr Nowakowski, Universitas Kraków 2001.

Elżbieta Łubowicz, ‘Cień w Mandali' [‘The Shadow in the Mandala'], Format, no. 59/2010

 

The exhibition of Janusz Leśniak's photographs at Dom Golonki was a program element of the 5th International Guitar Workshops in Lanckorona (12-22 July 2012), which link various art disciplines and, aside from didactic sessions (taking place in, among other venues, the exhibition space), offer concerts by distinguished artists (this year, among others: Carlo Marchione, the Vivante ensemble, the Arche trio); artistic director: Michał Nagy. http://www.gitaralanckorona.pl/

Photo: GB.

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

Janusz Leśniak, Humanity Is the Shadow of a Dream, Dom Golonki Gallery, Lanckorona

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