Terra Incognita project consists of two parts:
Part I – portraits of homeless people with modern city space as their background. The selection of the space aims to surprise the
viewer based on contradiction of the two (subject and the background) and not obvious esthetics. Models, who were chosen thanks to cooperation with MOPS in Kraków (Social Welfare Centre), are extraordinarily talented: a painter, a poet, a horizontal bikes creator, a handyman, a literature lover, etc. The creation should evoke the following questions: In what way am I different from them? How come these people are homeless now? How can I help? Can I be homeless one day?
The technical assumption is to print these portraits in large format (as big as possible for a given space) which underlines their power.
Part II – juxtaposition of photos from two sources: photos made by me during my visits to the shelters while I was preparing myself for the portraits described above. Before I started working with a given person I was able to get to know their living space and basic social problems (I was always accompanied by MOPS’ representative who introduced me to these issues) and photos made by homeless as a part of scientific thesis of Mr Marcin Kogut. The group of homeless were given out simple analog cameras and were to take any pictures they wanted. Those photos were never publicly shown or deeply analyzed concerning visual or aesthetic aspects.
MOPS asked me if I could do them a favor and digitize the photos taken by the homeless just “ad acta”. Doing that I discovered surprising parallel between my photos and those made by homeless. This part of the project is much stronger and it was created “by accident” and was unplanned – naturally evolved in the course of the project. Photos are paired up and the viewer can immediately discover similarities concerning content, composition, colors etc. The viewer can hardly, if at all, recognize which is mine and which was made by homeless person.
Hint: my photos are always positioned on the left.
Original size of the analog photos is 9×13 cm.
