Traditional Beauty

"In his project Hometown, Krzysztof Zielinski takes us back to his hometown and the time of his childhood. He sets out on a dark, cloudy day in autumn. With the first snow, the photographs begin to feature blurred contours that fall into deeper layers.
The photographs are not about capturing an angle, but rather about searching for internal mirroring, the inconspicuous polarity of objects connected by a path, a creek, a fence falling apart. Krzysztof Zielinski sets out to look for a point, an intersection from which he can again view the places of high personal intensity and significance. His inconspicuous photographs bear the beauty of experience, which is not necessarily related to the attractiveness of a place or its architecture, or its relative significance amongst other places. His category of beauty is one of traditional nature; it arises in searching for that internal landscape that is invisible to others, but which can be made available through photography.
And though he has recorded the results of his discoveries on 35mm film, the photographs are grayish and subdued in comparison with the saturated color typical to family albums.
Krzysztof Zielinski presents photographs that lack any trace of sentiment or acute gesture. In addition to the great intimacy they radiate, they offer a space for interpretation, silence and consistency. The places bear traces of time and transformation. What is happening there today is not important; the internal life of his photographs throb with a greater urgency.
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01.03.2001