Agnieszka Babińska
In memoriam
Agnieszka Babińska
In memoriam
Jerzy Lewczyński wrote in the text "The Archeology of Photography" about the features of the negative and its specific properties: “It is also the purpose of 'archeology of photography' to search for witnesses of past events! Light is such a witness in photography. Light, which was the technological stimulus for the processes of consolidating reality, and which carved the former universal presence in the negative! The negative is therefore a trace of "that" light and is an authentic witness of past events. This observation of the light remaining in the negative can be the subject of fascinating discoveries leading to revealing the secret of the sculpture of negative! The In memoriam series consists of works based on found and borrowed photographs. The artist uses abandoned, damaged, scratched, trampled, moldy negatives of unknown authorship found in abandoned houses, factories, mines, escort agencies, garbage cans, etc. The saved, forgotten and damaged negatives create a specific truth - artist finds in them a symbol of the abused past, traces of human existence, using archival visual material of completely anonymous people. Agnieszka Babińska tries to restore their memory and dignity through symbolic adoption. Using various artistic techniques and interventions in positive images, she creates sets and montages from old, forgotten negatives that restore the memory of people, events and places.
Agnieszka Babińska
Born in Gdańsk, visual artist , photographer, teacher, assistant professor at the Faculty of Photography (Faculty of Sculpture and Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk), where she runs the Staged Photography Workshop. She graduated in Photography from the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. She obtained a PhD in film arts from the National Film, Television and Theater School in Łódź, Department of Cinematography and Television Production She deals with staged imagery , photographing herself for many years and consistently producing works with a very personal dimension, which can be classified as feminist. Looking at genre preferences and conventions, she deals with classical photography, but her interests also include video art, installation and new media. In her works, she plays with her own identity. At the same time, she touches on the problems of femininity entangled in cultural stereotypes. The artist does not stop re-inventing herself. At the same time, she is interested in the "materiality" of the image.
Exhibition Availability
UwB campus, Ciołkowskiego 1M St., 26.09-13.10.2024, Mon-Fri 14:00-18:00, free admission