michel szulc krzyzanowski

conceptual photography

Interview by Beata van de Veerdonk.

Fotovakschool

19-2-2020


How and why did you start with photography?

I studied the first year at the St. Joost Academy in Breda.

In 1970 I obtained my diploma in photography and free graphics at the Royal Academy in 's-Hertogenbosch. Since then I have been working as an independent photographer.

Why ?

When you have a passion, you can be of significance to fellow human beings. I was and am of the opinion that you should not keep a passion to yourself: I had to give my passion free rein and always share it with other people as much as possible. I saw this as an ideal, meaningful and effective way to become meaningful to other people.

Tell something about yourself?

My name is Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski, born in 1949 in Oosterhout. In 1971 I exhibited my first photo sequences in the Noord-Brabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch. In 1972 I had my first foreign exhibition of photo sequences at the Camden Arts Center in London. Until 1985 I worked on my black-and-white sequences in Europe, North Africa, the United States and especially Mexico. From 1995 to 2000 I worked again at the former sequencing locations in Mexico on the VISTA series. In 2000 I moved my base from the Netherlands to Spain and worked in the Parc Natural Cabo de Creus on the Punta Prima series. In 2005 I left Cadaques to continue living and working without a permanent place of residence. Since then I have worked in various locations worldwide, but regularly spend longer periods in my camper in Mexico. There I am working on new conceptual photography at the same location, Punta Marquez, where I started my sequences in 1979.

Why did you move to Spain in 2000?

The context in which a deep depression gripped me during that period was Amsterdam. Was the Netherlands. And everything I experienced there.

I noticed that when I was traveling I didn't suffer from that terrible depression.

The conclusion was clear and obvious: I had to leave Amsterdam. Away from the Netherlands.

It was a living and working environment there that had a negative effect on me.

And why? Because it placed limits on my creativity, ambition and dynamism. It built high walls around me that closed me in.

The trees in the Dutch forest were allowed to be less tall than those in France and the US, where I spent a lot of time and was successful with my work. I was appreciated and valued there, while in the Netherlands I had the feeling that I was being thwarted because if you just acted normal in the polder you were already crazy enough.

My aim was to inspire, motivate, inform and move people with my photography.

My mother had not wanted me and would rather not have become pregnant with me: that fact threw me into the safety net of justifying my existence with my photography. So it had to be carried out as optimally as possible.

The idea of radically leaving the Netherlands was also inspired by the fact that house prices in Amsterdam had risen enormously in 2000. I could have bought my property for next to nothing in 1985 and if I sold it, the price would have increased 22 times.

I thought I had to take that chance.

At that moment I foresaw that an economic crisis was coming. I had seen the indications of this in the US and assumed that the economic crisis would also hit Europe.

I also saw then that the tax burden in the Netherlands would seriously increase and the regulations would become stricter: that would make it impossible to make a living as an independent photographer.

I sold the Amsterdam building and moved the proceeds to a place where it could not disappear due to an economic crisis.

Can you tell me more about the VISTA series in Mexico?

10 years after I stopped making sequences, in 1995 I returned as an experiment to the locations in Mexico where I had once made this conceptual work. I felt homesick for those spectacular times I had spent there. The great excitement and fantastic joy I always felt when I created a new sequence. But especially secret nostalgia for my way of life during a sequence period. Living alone for months in a remote, isolated location in pure nature by the sea. Lots of exercise, yoga, meditation, simple vegetarian food. No television and internet. Life optimally, deep and pure. With great inner peace and tranquility.

I was curious whether I would be inspired again and be able to create new conceptual work: that indeed happened. No longer in a serial manner, but in a few images where I used mirrors. By 1998 I had already made so much new conceptual photography that it could be turned into a book. The photo book “Vista”. And with that new work I got exhibitions and sales everywhere again.

Why do you do a lot of autonomous photography?

Surviving as an autonomous and conceptual photographer in the early 1970s was no easy task.

Especially because autonomous photography was not yet recognized as an independent art form. Photography was not a visual art. It was just a craft. So being autonomous, creating and executing your own projects with photography was an approach that was not taken seriously.

In any case, I wanted to avoid having to rent my time, talent and energy to an employer in order to have an income. To relegate my autonomous photography to a side job.

My ambition to do my own things with photography was too great for that. So I had to come up with solutions for this. So that I could maintain my autonomy to create authentic work. Photography from the heart and still something in the wallet.

Did you also earn a living with it?

Shortly after graduating, I contacted Wim Broekman, the editor-in-chief of the photo magazine “FOTO” and Jacques Meijer, the editor-in-chief of “Fototribune”. In 1971 they published many pages in their magazines with my photos from Poland and Czechoslovakia and that money allowed me to live and work for a few more months.

I also got the idea to try to get sponsored. Because buying films, photo paper and chemicals were huge expenses for me at the time.

In Amsterdam the company Transcontinenta imported Ilford and Rollei products.

Through contact I had the opportunity to speak to the director and made an appointment with him.

That wasn't all that easy because I didn't have a telephone. Whenever I wanted to call someone, I used the telephone in Willy de Greef's shop.

No money to have a telephone connected in the old and worn-out floor where I lived...

The director of Transcontinenta was sympathetic and referred me to the sales manager: Cees van der Heijden.

Cees van der Heijden became an important man in the first years of my career.

Because of two reasons.

He could and wanted to be generous. When I went to a location to photograph again, I walked to Willy de Greef's shop and called Cees.

We made an appointment and I went to see him in Amsterdam.

There I told him what I needed and he gave it to me. Films, photo paper and chemicals.

With my arms full I went back to 's Hertogenbosch and was able to travel with enough films.

That was very important and was essential for creating the sequences.

Making sequences required a lot of films. Because it was pioneering, experimenting and trial and error, I simply had to photograph everything the way it came to mind. That methodology was not limited by a realization that too many films would cost money. On the contrary, because Cees gave me as many films as I wanted, I could freely take as many photos as my inspiration asked me.

The same goes for developing and printing: my own income would not have been able to cover that but because of Ilford's generosity it was no problem at all.

It was also striking that Ilford wanted nothing in return. Ilford never asked what was actually in return.

They didn't care.

The second reason why Cees van der Heijden played such an important role in the early years of my career was that he was in fact a philosopher who thought very seriously about life. Whenever we saw each other we would sit in comfortable chairs and talk about life for hours.

That was fascinating and interesting because Cees was a very good-natured person who did not think in terms of conflicts. They were dynamic and positive conversations that were very useful to me.

On the one hand, these positive conversations and on the other hand, the generosity that made it possible for me to work as a truly autonomous photographer: they were great gifts in my life.

Cees van der Heijden left Ilford a few years later and became a preacher.

I later met him again at the Overtoom in Amsterdam with a Bible in his hand.

A happy and beautiful man.

Can you briefly describe a working week?

In 1986 I was approached by the Chief Government Architect. He was responsible for using art in a new tax office in Eindhoven. He wanted to buy sequences for that.

But I suggested to him that he let me make new work especially for this building.

He asked for a plan. I visited the building and saw that a large stairwell had been built into it. A staircase up, a platform where you turned 180 degrees and then another staircase to reach the higher floor. The platform had a blank wall so you looked out at it when you walked up the first part of the stairs and when you walked down the first part of the stairs. My idea was to hang a series of photos on each of the 4 walls of the 4 floors showing you walking up or down a famous staircase somewhere in the world.

I chose the famous Eisenstein stairs in Odessa, Ukraine; a stairway to heaven in the Sahara desert in southern Morocco; a staircase built by the Incas in the Amazon jungle in Bolivia and of course a staircase on a dike in the Netherlands.

The plan was approved and the first trip went to South America for the Inca staircase. My then girlfriend Angeline of course came along as she did on many of my trips. We traveled around Colombia, Peru and Bolivia for a month. Because in addition to photographing the stairs in the Amazon jungle in Bolivia, we also wanted to visit the magical Machu Pichu in Peru.

At that time I was also very active with stock photography. Because a photo agency had been started in Amsterdam called Hollandse Hoogte. They had asked if they could sell my documentary photography to newspapers and magazines. Because I traveled so much, I was able to take many stock photos for Hollandse Hoogte in addition to the actual purpose of the trip.

All photos that were typical of that country could find a market through Hollandse Hoogte.

Because I love photography so much, stock photography was an enormously positive and enriching extension of my travels. It also regularly generated considerable income.

I did this intensively for years until Hollandse Hoogte lost its market for all kinds of reasons and stock photography no longer made financial sense.

At one point we were in Puno, Peru and befriended a German couple and their son. Together we went to the floating islands: in Lake Titicaca Indians lived on floating islands made of reeds. Then we all wanted to go to Machu Pichu with a special tourist train. However, it turned out that we went a day earlier: the German friends would join us shortly afterwards.

Two days later in Machu Pichu we read it in the newspapers: the tourist train had been hit by a bomb planted by the guerrilla movement “Sendero Luminoso” one day after we had traveled on it and our German friends had been killed.


How did you come up with the idea to make a photo project about Africa?

Stories about poverty, hunger and misery in Africa continued to appear in the press in 1988. Usually with associated fundraising activities. I wondered what real life in Africa was actually like. Of course, there were extremely difficult situations in various regions of Africa: but what was average life like in Africa? If I could show that, there would be more balance in the European view of life in Africa. My idea was to live in a village in Africa for a few months and follow 3 people in their daily lives. And then to report on these 3 people as up-to-date as possible every week in a magazine in the Netherlands.

To use this approach to bring daily life in a village in Africa very close to the daily life of the Dutch reader/viewer.

I found Nieuwe Revu willing to publish the series. Received various subsidies for it and the cooperation of the development organization NOVIB.

How did you come up with the idea to start the “World of Love” project?

I believed that people just as much needed, and had the right, to have positive news alongside negative news.

That's why I came up with the photo project “World of love”.

To show a family in 4 countries around the world who lived in love with each other. Photographing the families like I did with my Henny project: following the people with the camera for a longer period of time. And this time purely from the starting point of wanting to show how they loved each other. In 1994, “World of Love” was presented as a photo exhibition for 6 months in the Tropenmuseum.

What are you very proud of and what is your greatest motivation: could you tell us more about that?

I don't know the feeling of being proud of what I have done. I simply do my job like a nurse in a hospital. I see my work as an ideal, meaningful and effective way to be of significance to other people.

My aim is to inspire, motivate, inform and move people with my photography.

Welke camera gebruik je en met welke computer/laptop werk je en bewerk je ook foto’s?

Because the organization of "A Day in the Life of America" had no money, we were paid in kind as participating photographers.

We received a Nikon compact camera as a gift and a new Apple computer with a matrix printer.

A few weeks later, two large boxes containing the Apple computer were delivered to me in Amsterdam.

It was the first model that Apple released at the time: I was one of the first in the Netherlands to have an Apple computer.

I thought, what should I do with a computer? I am a photographer, use cameras, films, have a darkroom: what could a computer be for? At that time, an Apple computer with printer cost 14,000 guilders in the Netherlands.

I thought, I'd rather have that money than a computer. Placed an advertisement in the newspaper: “Apple computer for sale”. But there was hardly any interest in it.

A few days later I decided to open the boxes. And soon discovered how useful an Apple computer was. Not for my photography because that first model was only suitable for text, not for images. Until then I did all my correspondence with an electric typewriter. With a computer it was much more convenient: to make corrections and print several copies of one text. And when negatives could be scanned and photos could be edited on the Apple, the gates were completely closed.

Since "A Day in the Life of America" in 1986, there have always been Apple computers in my practice.

I have always worked with Nikon cameras: now with an F800. And a Canon G7 for smaller work.

I use a MacBook Pro for finishing.

And yes, I edit practically all my photos with Photoshop.

What plans do you have for the future and where would you see yourself in 5 years?

I am currently working on my “Memoirs”. Part 1 from 1949 to 2005. And I am busy setting up a new worldwide photo project. To ask people worldwide: “Where is God?”

What top tips would you give to new photographers?

Tip 1.

Photography is a very interesting medium because you can use it for your own personal growth, report on it with your photos so that it can also be interesting and useful to other people.

Instead of living in selfishness, you make yourself socially relevant with this approach.

So that is a far-reaching choice for new photographers: do I want to work on my personal growth? Do I want to share that with other people?

But there are other ways to have photography in your life.

As a form of livelihood or as a hobby.

Thinking about this and making a choice early in your career is wise.

Tip 2.

The world of photography is spectacular but not always easy. You have to be very strong if you want to survive in the world of photography.

It is wise to inform yourself very well at an early stage about what to expect. For example, by reading my memoirs.

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