michel szulc krzyzanowski
conceptual photography
Discussion by Pieter van Leeuwen
in photo-magazine/website PF/Professionele Fotografie 2012
It sounds strange, but for conceptual artist Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski, thinking should not dominate. If thinking is given all the space it pushes out intuition and feeling, this is at the expense of openness, the chance of a surprise is reduced and you grow less. All things that are essential for Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski.
How does that work? He comes up with a framework for a project, but leaves the photography open. Let's take his best-known work as an example. The photo series he made on Mexican beaches. First an introduction. It started with a stay on Schiermonnikoog. during his studies at Sint Joost in Breda. Bearing in mind the lessons in perception he had received from teacher Hans Katan, he saw that his image of an object changed crucially as it approached. He realized that the process of observation was more visually interesting than a photograph of its beginning or end. This led him to capture such processes in series of photographs. A fascinating idea, but its implementation is not without snags. Recognizing the processes is difficult. But he has found a method that increases the chance of discovery for him personally. That starts with a low-stimulus environment, usually a deserted beach in Mexico. He isolates himself in a camper, which is now equipped in such a way that he can survive outside civilization for four weeks. He doesn't even have to go shopping. He lives there with the regularity and austerity of a monk. Healthy food, sports and yoga, no telephone, internet and TV. An ascetic life that results in something akin to a prolonged meditation. When the worldly noise disappears, concentration increases. The sensitivity to the processes he wants to photograph increases. This is where the planning stops. Thinking no longer dominates but stands next to intuition and feeling. If he didn't work like that, this project would never have lasted so long and the wealth of works it produced would have been a lot poorer. There would probably have been much less development. The black-and-white sequences have made way for some color images through intermediate stations, and it is no longer just about observational processes, but also about the interaction between the individual images and its relationship to its environment.
Burn ship
Personal development is what it's all about for Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski. If it comes to a standstill, in his eyes a project becomes meaningless. In 1985 he therefore stopped his Mexican image series. He had been making sequences of them for 15 years with great success. There were major interests involved in the art world. They were in collections of museums and galleries all over the world. The interplay of forces surrounding all the attention and sales increasingly felt like an artistic stranglehold. People wanted to see production, especially of the best-selling triptychs. His personal development played no role in this. Stopping was his way of escape. This created space for his other projects. Not all of them were artistically conceptual, but sometimes purely documentary. For example, his project about working young person Henny. That stood out. It was unusual at the time for an artistic photographer to hop from genre to genre like that, and even today many people still frown upon this. Yet almost every person does similar things. After all, people are complex, it is possible that a motorcyclist is also in a choir. From Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski's developmental perspective, it is not strange at all to do a photo project in which he explores completely different aspects of life. Henny was a very ordinary Dutch girl who worked on the assembly line of the cookie factory. It wasn't planned that way at the time, but now, forty-four years later, he still follows Henny as a middle-aged woman. The longevity of the project gives it a greater artistic dimension. Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski will most likely follow her through until death separates them. A new photographer has also been found for Henny's daughter. Linsey Kuijpers follows Charlotte and as soon as she has a sixteen-year-old son or daughter, hopefully another photographer will be added. This creates, if everyone continues to cooperate, an unusually long-term project in which overlapping life courses are followed. Just like in his Mexican work, the concept is special and a process is followed. This time the life story of Henny. Naturally, there is experimentation. For example, in the fifth part Henny himself was directed and the last part focuses on interviews. The project is being followed with great interest, not only in the arts but also in the social sector. In addition to these two major projects, Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski has set up numerous small projects, often based on an artistic concept and with a documentary content. For example, he created a project around the person who lives in the geometric center of America and followed a couple named Adam and Eve. Artistic concepts of documentary sampling with the aim of capturing the lives of ordinary people.
Even his Mexican sequences have been followed up since the early 1990s. Today they are in color and can also be done in single images. But the perception of and interaction with the environment remains the theme.
Selling a house
He also acts as resolutely as he did with his successful sequences in his subsequent life. For example, he sold his house in Spain fourteen years ago and has had no permanent residence since. The motivation is similar. If something, no matter how pleasant, no longer changes, it no longer helps him to further develop himself personally. Everything revolves around self-development and that even takes precedence over financial security and solid ground under your feet. Photography is the most suitable tool for his self-development. However different his photo projects may be. The camera works again and again like a key on a door behind which lies a new world that demands exploration.
Sequence
His viewing experience on Schiermonnikoog could not be put into an obvious form. A single photo is not enough to show a process. Then you have to film or take several photos and present them as a cluster. This produces a strip of images that is difficult to capture in a book or list. But despite that practical inconvenience, they became a great success. Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski started by depicting observational processes in which things such as shadow, reflection and change over time play an important role. But he gradually expanded his field with interactions in the landscape and experiments with special combinations of images. The triptych posted here mainly concerns the latter. There is a suggestion of a story in it, and the stone and fist can also be seen as symbols. It is therefore not what you expect from a sequence by Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski, even though it suits him very well. Observation processes were a good starting point for a journey through other areas in which you can further develop yourself through experimentation with photo series. Even working in series has already been abandoned and is regularly replaced by single works with similar content. It is still on the same site. For Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski it is about much more than observational processes. But that process is still central to the viewer. When viewed, his photos still result in a mixture of surprise and confusion.
Documentary
In search of the special, it is all too easy to forget the ordinary.
Henny is a middle-aged Dutch woman who has been followed by Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski since she was a moped. The highs and lows in Henny's life are discussed, and everything in between. Things that are not normally recorded for an individual are documented in detail. Imagine how, two centuries from now, archaeologists will look at these booklets with fascination. What is now ordinary will eventually become special. In Henny's case, that process has already begun.