Zosia Martin, Maja Zaleska, Michał Szymończyk

Międzymorze / Intermarium, 2015

installation

passage between buildings in the yard at 6 Wilków Morskich Street

 

Józef Kurzawski’s Foto-Port photographic studio in Nowy Port functioned until the 1990s. After it closed down, local enthusiasts searched in vain for any left behind negatives, which, in accordance with the photographer’s last will, were supposed to have been destroyed. Twenty years later, in a derelict shed at the back of the former studio, Izabela Sitz and Piotr Połoczański with some helpers managed to find some of the lost material that had survived, which they protected and archived.

The artists have used a fragment of the retrieved archives – a unique collection of facial portraits of the local residents and those who frequented it. They have placed the photographs in the narrow strip of the backyard, at the back of the old studio. Employing light, sound and image, they create an oneiric, disturbing space, which has come into existence as a by-product of memories; it takes them back to the heyday of Nowy Port and its residents. The past is present in the minute cracks on the single format frames and in the flicker of the ancient projector. A sweep of water introduced into urban space evokes the former character of this seaport district and fills a temporary incursion into the present with memories.

Zosia Martin (b. 1992) – an MA student of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. She aims to combine different media and means of expression, inspired by emotions, personal experience and perspicuous perception of reality.

Maja Zaleska (b. 1991) – a graduate of the Faculty of Painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. She lives in and loves Nowy Port. In her her she cultivates the memory of objects and places.

Michał Szymończyk (b. 1989) – a photographer, resident in Nowy Port. He takes shots of the life in the city; he is interested in people, inaccessible places, intangible moments. He takes a moment to reflect on situations that for other passers-by are of no significance.