Azenhas do Mar is my discovery, my favourite place in Portugal, near Sintra where I have been living recently. I love winding narrow streets on the hill, the restaurant overlooking the Ocean from the cliff, and a natural pool edged by a stone path, the emerald eye flooded from time to time by waves. I am coming back there alone and with friends, I am coming back there in every season, I love to go back there and shoot whenever I can. So here comes the first session of the series made by three different vibes and models. That time I went there with Nadia Chamorra, a model from Moscow leaving in Lisbon, being a star of some Portuguese TV shows, and working here as a model on a catwalk. Please, enjoy!
Photograph: Arkadiusz Rączka; Stylist: Katarzyna Piontecka-Lawenda; MUA: Marta Chmielińska; Model: Iza Wrzołek
I took this picture like three years ago when my historical fiction Heresy had been published.
This photo was just a pictorial echo of a text, of a novel, of more than 600 pages soaked with passion, spiritual, experiences, discoveries and travels through space and time.
Recently I gave a title to this picture.
The title is the Portrait of Doriana Gray.
What I am doing here by introducing a title is contextualizing the visual,
as the text start to rule over pictorial content, the textual frame becomes as important as the picture.
What I am doing here by introducing a title is forcing you to see my picture in a certain way, devoid you of freedom of interpretation, destroy naive openness of the artwork.
What I am doing here is to invite you to play with meaning, to make fun, but under conditions set by the host.
I want you to see some tracks which I did in post-production like the effect which was put over the apple to show the contrast between skin and peel, between artificial smoothness of the face and the cracked apple covered by paint like it would be in fact painting, the art itself, or perhaps the portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wild.
I am setting you off to discover that path of associations. The effect of cracked paint is like the visual agent of the title.
Doriana may look at the apple as Dorian was looking at his portrait, yet they both believe in their permanent youth and beauty though can see first marks of decay.
The title and the post-production effect are like a frame of the picture,
but this frame is important as the work itself.
It is so different to what for example Greek philosophers believed in.
The frame was for them the parergon what in the ancient Greek means „beside or additional to work”. For Greek philosophers, this notion was not actually of great importance. In general, they were looking for the essence, not for random, specific features which were just like additions, like a frame for a picture.
But the essence may be interconnected with the parergon, and the real meaning is somewhere in between them.
Jean Jaques Derrida, the famous French postmodern Philosopher, explains that when looking at the work the frame is part of the wall, and yet when looking at the wall it is part of the work. Refused by each to be considered as part of themselves the frame exists between the two, as a separate entity.
Derrida said about the parergon in his book The Truth in Painting (I had a pleasure and pain to translate some fragments of that book into Polish) following words: “Neither work (ergon) nor outside the work (hors d’oeuvre), neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work.” As Ally Mc Ginn noticed, the function of the parergon, then, is to create a framework that contextualises (and re-contextualises) what is being framed. The parergon is both a literal framing or placement and a metaphysical concept that denotes context, both of which can be understood and used by the artist and the viewer (https://www.allymcginn.com/research-blog/2017/10/17/research-derrida-and-the-frame).
Luciana Fasano (@lufasano) is an Argentinian model living and working in Lisbon. She is Cordobesa, it means that she comes from Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina. She’s on the tail of her European descendants. Her family originates mainly from Italy, but there is also a German’s track.We were walking in Barrio Alto and Alfama looking for fine locations. You won’t find too much Lisbon in these pictures, but you can discover Luciana.
Tim Walker is a contemporary fashion photographer leaving in London.
He has been shooting for the British, Italian and American editions of Vogue and many other fashion magazines.
He’s elaborated his own style which is based on surreal fantasies often inspired by fairy tales. The scenes of his shots are created in collaboration with his team of set builders, and stylists. In his opinion, designing sets are the most pleasurable part of creating a picture. His photographs are narrative and encourage a viewer to get to the dreamy Wonderland.
Tim Walker for i-D Magazine Summer 2017
Tim Walker refers very often to Alice in Wonderland, perhaps his favourite sources of inspiration. It may be a kind of escapism, or return to childhood, as he once said: only as kids we have enough time to wander and daydream, what he was doing as a child.
Walker for Vogue Italia 2015
This ‘eternal’ return to childhood and Alice in Wonderland finally came to a great sequence of shots for Pirelli Calendar. He decided to tell the story in a completely new way. Tim Walker says ‘Alice has been told so many times and I wanted to go back to the genesis of the imagination behind Lewis Carroll to tell it from the very beginning again. I wanted to find a different and original angle.’ The key to the new point of view was an all-black cast of celebs like Naomi Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg or Duckie Thot – the Sudanese-Australian model, also known as ‚Black Barbie’.
It seems to be an attempt to show the universality of the story by celebrating diversity.
Tim Walker for Pirelli Calendar 2018
However, as we can see in the picture above Tim Walker is still faithful to the idea of a return to childhood. The kid in this picture is a giant and seems yet to grow but doesn’t intend to leave the house of the past. It also tells us about the creative process which Tim Walker describes as imagining photography as ‘a secret room’ which you may find only when your ‘intentions are true’.
Planning is a waste of time. I was doing quite well in London, running my studio, taking headshots for actors and corporate pictures. I knew it would be the last session as I was planning to move out, so I left whole equipment in the Shurgard self-storage unit in Croydon, knowing that I can complete my removal next month. A strange place, a silver spacious labyrinth on several storeys, it is easy to lose your way, hard to find the door of a lift. Loads of rat traps scattered in aisles, you wonder how those rodents manage in the maze, probably better than you. The most important that my belongings were safe.
I came back to Poland to celebrate Christmas. On new year’s eve at 7 pm, the fireworks start to light up the skies, but on this day someone else happened. The fire broke up in the storage magazine and everything was just burnt down to the ground including my lovely B2 Profoto lights, everyone worth 2000 pounds. Not to mention other stuff, Manfrotto tripods, accessories, everything has just literally gone with the wind or rather with the fire. It meant the end of my career in the UK but there had been earlier the last session with a beautiful Russian model living in London.
Alena Tsar is a real prof, no doubts about it, every her pose and overall attitude proves it. It was a pleasure to work with her. She was so kind as to send me many links to fashion and art magazines where I could promote my photos. But I was too lazy or too depressed at that moment to thank her. Thank you so much, Alena.
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