Single Shot by curator Krzysztof Miekus was a group exhibition of 30 polish photographers from different generations. I have designed typography, visual identity and a catalogue for this show and produced it as well.
Curatorial description: (...) “Believing is seeing,” writes Errol Morris. Photographs reveal or conceal. In Antonioni’s Blow-Up movie, a photograph uncovers a murder but it cannot reveal the murderer. Thomas, the protagonist, is left only with an image. Subsequent enlargements don’t explain anything – the well-known shapes decompose and dissolve into grain. The photographer-detective will never find out what happened in Maryon Park. When asked “What did you see in that park?” he answers “Nothing”. Perhaps he should have added that he didn’t know what he was supposed to see. Photography is passive, it is just an image. It is not given the value: true or false. The latter is ascribed only to the text, which can be consistent with what is pictured or differ from it. As a matter of fact, a photograph does not have any informational value – until we know what the picture shows, we cannot see it. We simply recognise familiar shapes, objects and symptoms. The rest is abstraction. When we look today at an over 40-year-old made up newspapers, as part of Sarah Charlesworth’s Modern History project, we are unable to understand anything. The artist removed the whole text from selected International Herald Tribune issues, and left only pictures. today, we look at them like we would look at someone else’s family photos. Photography tries to fight for autonomy, but it is utopian because it doesn’t exist outside the area of pure abstraction. And even that raises questions: What is in that picture?
