SPUTNIK PHOTOS

Krystyna Dul, Resonance

My original intention was to create a visual documentation of a space, which has been my home for several years. However, with each subsequent photograph I felt more and more the strong male energy that enchanted this place saturated with eroticism. Dusty pornographic magazines, bas-reliefs of naked women and clothed men possessing their young bodies via gesture or gaze, a collection of old photographs of familiar women, cuttings of female images from the press, their bodies trapped in frames and albums, taken over, rephotographed, multiplied and framed again… The person who did it eventually became the protagonist of my series, although I did not manage to meet him.
From the very beginning I worked very intuitively, without a predetermined plan. I tried to realise every idea that came to my mind, although many of them turned out to be dead ends. This freedom to create ultimately allowed me to determine what I wanted to convey with my series. I was extremely satisfied with my work with archival and press materials. The breakthrough came with changing from the pure documentation of the space to interfering in this space – creating structures or sculptures from elements in the environment, elements which as a result related much more accurately to the story being told.
Resonance is a story about the loneliness of an elderly man and his unflagging desire for women. It is a story about transience and about the fact that youth is ruthlessly temporary, about a vivid imagination taming unbearable reality, and about creative action as an antidote to loneliness. Perhaps it is a story that is to a certain extent universal. A story, which will happen again, which will take a more or less similar form, and its essence will remain the same – with time, what we experience, our world, will only become a memory and a product of our imagination.
My main intention was to follow in the footsteps of my protagonist’s thoughts and actions. Revealing the nooks and crannies of his home, I tried to delve into his mind, recreate the associations he had and his ways of thinking. Pixelated images borrowed from pornographic magazines entwine reality with a dense network of undefined sexual undertones, blurring our previous ideas about this space, violating its innocence, its dignified image. Archival photographs, like in a kaleidoscope, flicker with obscure memories. The embarrassed ordinariness of the interiors presented arouses anxiety, putting us on edge. Sleepy dreams seep into matter, fragments of sensations flash through our memory.
Desire hangs heavy in the air.