The idea of time, and the drawn lines between the past, present and the future, seem to be just as abstract as the statement that the past doesn’t exist. But how can we be sure, that what we remember as an event from the past has actually happened? What if the visions kept in our memories are only a projection of life? Perhaps there is only nowness and the future- our current state and what we cannot predict; but will surely happen. Maybe there is no today, nor tomorrow. Time doesn’t exist, thus neither do its boundaries. We have only created this abstract idea of time, for a point of reference, in order to live and discuss our existences. The exhibition “Pod włos” (Against the grain) features students of the Lodz Film School’s Department of Photography, who bring up the subject of time, presenting their individual projects that involve a wide spectrum of curiosities. For example, they mystify the past, reconceptualizing it for their own artistic use, just like Dorota Kozieradzka in her “Olympic Charmer” series. They reach for Dziga Wiertow’s and Walter Ruttmann’s words of the past, to compose a symphony of modern metropolis - Maciej Telka’s “Zanik”. They look on modern day heroes, who struggle with disease. Women fighting for their future in the present, yet determined by the past, are found in Julia Klewaniec’s cycle “Amazonki”. They ask about the future - if our identity becomes fluid and possible to change over and over, it is the same as putting on a different skin- as in Agata Wieczorek’s “The fetish of the image”. But maybe, by wearing a costume and becoming a super hero extracted from the future, we could reveal the modern world’s desires, as Karolina Golis does in her cycle “Lady Flame”. The artists, by telling different stories, manifest what is individually significant for them. They also show the multidimensionality of time’s existence, often by not going with the flow, but against the grain.