ENCHANTMENTS

ANDREW M. KOBOS

Recently, I read substantially about "Kapism", the postimpressionist phase of Polish painting, and in particular about the painter Jozef Czapski (1896-1993), one of the representatives of this trend. Except for Czapski who was active until the late 1980s, Kapism flourished in the 1920s-1940s. In their paintings, Kapist artists portrayed simple objects, plain still nature, situations taken from everyday life, and common people, unknown to them. They stripped their paintings off all the glamour, embellishment, and story telling, or "screenplay".

While working on Czapski and Kapism I quickly realized that Czapski's way of looking at things, his "eye", and his vision were similar to mine. Here, I refer to his paintings and my photographs. Alike Czapski, I was frequently dazzled, enchanted by common things, sometimes those for scrap. I found a peculiar beauty in their details. I was also fascinated with human faces, most frequently, but not always, of the people I encountered accidentally, all subject to the relentless and irrevocable effect of time.

Mostly unbeknown to Kapism and Czapski's paintings, for many years I have been taking pictures of things and people that momentarily enchanted me. Alike to Kapists' paintings, there is no screenplay in my photography, no items are there which are redundant in creating an image, sometimes a cropped one.

Obviously, my medium has been different than Czapski's and certainly an easier one. A painting is being created for a longer while, while taking a picture with a camera is a rapid event. It usually consists of noticing the subject and making a split-second decision to shoot the picture, although the very act of photographing takes somewhat longer. The latter involves (apart from a reporter's-type situation) a spatial composing, some transformation of the ambient reality – usually by means of interplay of light and shadows or contrasts – some interference despite the inherent fidelity of the camera to reality. The delight of noticing the beauty, of becoming enchanted with the subject and the joy of instant recording these on the film is no lesser than that of the subsequent browsing the resulting photos.

Such analogies in Czapski's and my perceiving the reality struck me so strongly that I have created yet another my photographic gallery in the Internet. It contains pictures taken in the years 1984-2003 at many places in North America and Europe. The different photos placed in this gallery are, it seems to me, linked with one underlying feature: a look with the "Czapski eye", or in other words an enchantment by the "minuteness" of things and people too.

It is why I called my new photo gallery Enchantments or Zachwycenia in Polish. I have grouped the photographs in twelve sections, according to the object of my enchantment: "People"; "The Less Known Alberta, Canada"; "Native People of Canada"; "Icefields"; "Fringe Festival, Edmonton, AB, 2000"; "Walls"; "Doors"; "Windows"; "Residues"; "Fruits of the Earth"; "Wood"; "Monuments." In this gallery, however, no trees or rocks are depicted. These perhaps enchant me above all, but my photos on these themes are displayed in my other Internet galleries.

I kindly invite you to browse my photo gallery "Enchantments – Zachwycenia."

Andrew Kobos

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