accompanying events
Bogdan Konopka
"The Photogeny of Silence"
...The world shown in a photograph appears the more quiet, the more scantily it is clad in light. Not being reality nor a language, it does not easily succumb to imaginative or symbolic analysis. Ornamented with the silence of what is past, it seems to be a miracle emanating from a distant source: a forever lost, unique reflection of continuance. 'Photogeny,' when it is attributed to people or objects, can be in its essence, an appraisal of the meagerness of the specter which envelops it. How much silence, which did not pass without an echo, has accumulated in a few temples, where light is scarcely visible, even though it is light which is their eternal queen? A photographic creation is nothing more than a toilsome erection of temples, where anyone can perhaps find the whole world as well as the Creator, even if he was to appear only as the most enduring abstraction that humankind has invented across the span of time. The bell is only so loud because it is hollow inside, so the greatness of God is revealed above all else in the wisdom of silence. This is why we should try to create photogenic temples in the land of the artistic tumult; let us try to find ourselves and find each other while it is still not too late...
Bogdan Konopka, Paris 18.III.2010.
Bogdan Konopka (born 1953)
started taking pictures in the mid-seventies, with his objective turned toward the city in which he lived, and of which 70% was destroyed in the Second World War. A city with a dual identity: Breslau – Wroclaw. What interests him the most is the sphere of shadows, in the sense of the common view of things, as well as the nature of photography itself. But it is precisely these photographs which will not see the light of day for years, because the political climate of those times did not favor them. It is not until they are displayed – in Angers in France in 1991 that "Le Monde” proclaims them a revelation. Konopka will continue to consistently photograph cities in which he will live and reside. First this will be Angers, and then Paris. The Invisible City series will bring him international acclaim after it is displayed at the festival in Arles in 1994. He will get the European Photography Award Grand Prix de la ville de Vevey in 1998 for Grey Paris. At that time Bogdan Konopka returned to Central Europe and travelled across seven countries of the former Eastern Bloc, creating the series Reconnaissance, which was an attempt at settling debts with the fallen empire. Next, he made five journeys across China and tried to capture its age-old grayness of being which is dissipating into nonexistence. He favors photographing the city texture and scenery, but he also dabbles in portraits. Konopka’s work is mostly known for contact sheets made from foolscap negatives 4x5 and 8x10 inches, even though the author does not shy from medium format cameras, as well as from the small picture. In the last fifteen years, Konopka's work could be seen in many, sometimes very exotic, countries. His grey, poetic, somewhat surreal miniatures are both saturated with personal emotion and mystic energy which means that their author is usually recognized at first glance.
Konopka's More Important Cycles:
Wroclaw (1978–2004), Solidarity (1981), Portraits of Martial Law (1982–1983), Sine Die Reality 1982–1983, Invisible City (1990–2005), Sine Die Reality II (1993), Old Paris (1994–1995), Cryptograms (1998), Reconnaissance (1998–2000), Faces (1998-2005), China. The Empire of Grayness (2003–2005), Grey Memory (1993–2009).