XPRINT / photobook festival
Personal stories
The third edition of the XPRINT photobook festival explores intimate photographic narratives. We take a closer look at the work of artists, designers and publishers, for whom photobooks are a natural environment for visual analysis of deeply personal themes. Our guests publish their books in order to come to terms with their own interactions with external reality, to cope with stigmatizing events, to understand their own personal experience. The visual language they employ seems the most precise at those times.
DATES:
23 Nov – 25 Nov 2018 – main festival events
16 Nov – 30 Dec 2018 – meetings, exhibitions
organized by: PIX.HOUSE
co-organized by: The Arsenal Municipal Gallery (Arsenał Gallery), the Department of Photography at the University of the Arts in Poznań, Ego Gallery, Rodríguez Gallery, Ostrøv
curator: Michał Sita
admission to all events is free
principal partner: the City of Poznań
partners: Falter, Fujifilm, Instytut Fotografii Fort, Kompania Piwowarska, Fundacja Trzy Mosty, YES
_EVENTS CALENDAR
16 Nov 2018
5.15 – 7.30 pm Lecture by Mayumi Suzuki as part of the university class Theory and practice of depiction, Department of Photography, University of the Arts in Poznań (UAP). The lecture is open to the public. UAP Building B, 20 Janiny Lewandowskiej Street.
23 Nov 2018
5 pm The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong, Mayumi Suzuki, exhibition opening. Arsenał Gallery.
6.30 pm Deceitful Reverence, Igor Pisuk, exhibition opening and a book premier. PIX.HOUSE Gallery
7.30 pm Not Lil, Not Young, Kuba Dąbrowski, exhibition opening. Ego Gallery.
24 Nov 2018
2 pm Ukrainian Photobooks. In between a personal history and politics. Curator: Alina Sandulyak, exhibition opening. Rodríguez Gallery.
3 pm Krystian Daszkowski’s zine and exhibition premiere. Ostrøv.
4 pm BOOKI. Studying Photobooks, exhibition opening. Skala Gallery.
5-6 pm Kuba Dąbrowski, artist’s talk on Not Lil, Not Young exhibition. Arsenał Gallery.
6-7 pm Kacper Kowalski – artist’s talk on his book OVER. Arsenal Gallery.
7-8 pm Panel discussion on photographic diaries. The panelists are the authors of three zines published by PIX.HOUSE, premiering at the festival: Tomasz Liboska, Maciej Jeziorek, Krzysiek Orłowski, as well as Jerzy Piątek, the author of the zine texts. Moderators: Michał Sita and Adrian Wykrota (publishers).
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25 Nov 2018
12 – 1 pm Krystian Daszkowski gives a tour of his exhibition at Ostrøv.
1-2 pm Grzegorz Dąbrowski – artist’s talk on the archive of photographs by Bolesław Augustis and the book Augustis 2.0. Arsenał Gallery.
2-3 pm Mayumi Suzuki gives a tour of her exhibition The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong at Arsenał Gallery.
3-4 pm Deceitful Reverence – a panel talk on the new book; the panelists are Igor Pisuk, and BLOW UP PRESS publishers Grzegorz Kosmala and Aneta Kowalczyk. Arsenał gallery.
4-5 pm Alina Sandulyak, curator’s talk on Ukrainian Photobooks. In between a personal history and politics. Arsenał Gallery.
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1 Dec 2018
4.30 pm BOOKI. Studying Photobooks – exhibition tour guided by the curator, Jarosław Klupś. Skala Gallery.
5 Dec 2018
5 pm The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong by Mayumi Suzuki – exhibition tour guided by the curator, Michał Sita. Arsenał Gallery.
_ DETAILED PROGRAM
EXHIBITIONS
- The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong, Mayumi Suzuki, Arsenał Gallery – opening 23 Nov 2018, 5 pm; exhibition opened till 30 Dec 2018, Tuesday-Saturday 12-7 pm, Sunday 12-4 pm.
- Deceitful Reverence, Igor Pisuk, PIX.HOUSE Gallery – opening and a book premiere, 23 Nov 2018, 6:30 pm, exhibition opened till 30 Dec 2018, Tuesday-Saturday 5-7 pm, and at other times on demand.
- Not Lil, Not Young, Kuba Dąbrowski, Ego Gallery – opening 23 Nov 2018, 7:30 pm; exhibition opened till 30 Dec 2018, Tuesday-Friday 12-7 pm, Saturday 11 am-2 pm.
- Ukrainian Photobooks. Between private stories and Politics, curator Alina Sandulyak, Rodríguez Gallery – opening 24 Nov 2018, 2 pm; exhibition opened till 1 Dec 2018, Wednesday-Friday 12-7 pm, Saturday 12-5 pm.
- Krystian Daszkowski’s zine and exhibition premiere, Ostrøv – opening 24 Nov 2018, 3 pm; exhibition opened on 24 Nov 2018, 12-5 pm; 25 Nov 2018, 12-7 pm; other times until 9 Dec 2018 exhibition opened on demand.
- BOOKI. Studying Photobooks, prepared by Jarosław Klupś (Department of Photography, University of the Arts in Poznań), Skala Gallery – opening 24 Nov 2018, 4pm; exhibition opened 24 Nov 2018, 12-6 pm; 25 Nov 2018, 11 am – 4 pm; 26 Nov – 1 Dec 2018, 2-6 pm.
TALKS AT THE ARSENAŁ GALLERY
Saturday 24 Nov 2018
- 5 pm – Kuba Dąbrowski, artist’s talk on Not Lil, Not Young exhibition.
- 6 pm – Kacper Kowalski – artist’s talk on his book OVER.
- 7 pm – Panel discussion on photographic diaries. The panelists are the authors of the three zines published by PIX.HOUSE premiering at the festival, Tomasz Liboska, Maciej Jeziorek, and Krzysiek Orłowski, as well as Jerzy Piątek – the author of the zine texts. Moderators: Michał Sita and Adrian Wykrota (publishers).
Sunday 25 Nov 2018
- 1 pm – Grzegorz Dąbrowski – artist’s talk on the archive of photographs by Bolesław Augustis and a book Augustis 2.0.
- 2 pm – Mayumi Suzuki guides through her exhibition The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong
- 3 pm – Deceitful Reverence – panel talk on the the new book; panelists are Igor Pisuk and BLOW UP PRESS publishers Grzegorz Kosmala and Aneta Kowalczyk.
- 4 pm – Alina Sandulyak, curator’s talk on Ukrainian Photobooks. In between a personal history and politics.
EVENTS
- 16 Nov 2018, 5.15 pm, Lecture by Mayumi Suzuki as part of the university class Theory and practice of depiction, Department of Photography, University of the Arts in Poznań. The lecture is open to the public. UAP Building B, 20 Janiny Lewandowskiej Street.
- 25 Nov 2018, 12-1 pm, Krystian Daszkowski gives a tour of his exhibition at Ostrøv.
- 25 Nov 2018, 2 pm, Mayumi Suzuki gives a tour of her exhibition The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong at Arsenał Gallery.
- 1 Dec 2018, 4.30 pm, BOOKI. Studying Photobooks – exhibition tour guided by itscurator, Jarosław Klupś. Skala Gallery.
- 5 Dec 2018, 5 pm, The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong by Mayumi Suzuki – exhibition tour guided by its curator, Michał Sita. Arsenał Gallery.
PUBLISHING PREMIERES
- Igor Pisuk, Deceitful Reverence, BLOW UP PRESS. The book will be presented during the opening of the exhibition by Igor Pisuk at PIX.HOUSE Gallery, 23 Nov 2018, 6.30 pm. Panel discussion with an author and publishers at Arsenał Gallery 25 Nov 2018, 3 pm.
- Maciej Jeziorek: Fragments, Krzysiek Orłowski: North America, Tomasz Liboska: Odwrót. Zine premiere, PIX.HOUSE. Works of the three authors are parallel approaches toward the photographic diary genre. Their strategies will be confronted during the panel discussion at Arsenał Gallery, 24 Nov 2018, 7 pm.
- Mayumi Suzuki, newsprint integral with The Place to Belong displayed at the Arsenał Gallery
design: Honza Zamojski. The publication will have its premiere during the opening of the exhibition The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong, Arsenał Gallery, 23 Nov 2018, 5 pm.
- Adrian Wykrota, Nie, PIX.HOUSE. The book summarizes several years of the author’s photojournalistic work for the daily press, and comments on recent socio-political developments in Poland.
_ FESTIVAL ASSUMPTIONS
A series of talks and discussions with photographers, curators and publishers will take place on November 24-25 at the Arsenał Gallery. Grzegorz Dąbrowski, Kuba Dąbrowski, Kacper Kowalski, Alina Sandulyak and Mayumi Suzuki will be talking about their experiences with photobooks. A panel discussion concerning photo-diaries will be held with Tomasz Liboska, Maciej Jeziorek and Krzysiek Orłowski. Their diaristic zines published by PIX.HOUSE will have their premiere at the festival. Igor Pisuk is to discuss his work on the new book Deceitful Reverence, also having its debut at the festival. Publishers Grzegorz Kosmala and Aneta Kowalczyk (BLOW UP PRESS) are going to take part in the talk.
Two days of meetings and talks will be supplemented by a photobook exhibition. Each of our guests has prepared a small selection of publications that serve as an illustration and a commentary to their individual working methods. This exposition will provide an insight into our guests’ individual sets of inspirations, editorial schemes, and narrative strategies.
Three individual exhibitions will take place as part of the festival, and they are all closely related to the photobook medium. The central exposition in the Arsenał Gallery presents the works of Mayumi Suzuki. This is a strikingly honest and methodical exploration of archives and visual traces left in the ruins of her family home, destroyed by a tsunami. In The Restoration Will – a mosaic photobook – she combines pieces of a family album, remains of her father’s photographic portfolio, and material fragments of the family studio, which was in business there for 87 years, with her own contemporary photographs. She builds her personal narrative on the memory of her missing relatives. In The Place to Belong, a new work by Mayumi Suzuki premiering at the XPRINT festival, she extends the analysis of visual archives and traces of a cataclysm to comment on the problem of identity and memory in her family town, Onagawa. The place is repeatedly destroyed by waves and rebuilt, several times within a century. During her artist-in-residency programme at the PIX.HOUSE Gallery, Mayumi Suzuki will prepare a newsprint publication consisting of images from this new work. Honza Zamojski will be responsible for its design.
Deceitful Reverence by Igor Pisuk will be displayed at the PIX.HOUSE Gallery. The exhibition of direct, graphic images documenting the process of the author overcoming an alcohol addiction will be a context for the launch of his photobook. On Sunday, November 25th, the photographer and BLOW UP PRESS publishers: Aneta Kowalczyk and Grzegorz Kosmala, will take part in a panel discussion revealing the nuts and bolts of their work on this book.
At the Ego Gallery Kuba Dąbrowski will translate his newest set of photographic diaries into the exhibition format. His photographic notebooks consisting of daily visual comments evolve through the years along with the photographer, and are published periodically in photobooks of various forms. This time he will be analyzing the medium of the scrapbook itself, treating it as the primary form of a photobook.
Alina Sandulyak will present her curatorial selection of Ukrainian photobooks at the Rodríguez Gallery. Subjective narratives, private points of view and emotional plots are harnessed for a more general description of dramatic reality of wartime.
The Skala Gallery will host an exhibition of the Department of Photography at the University of the Arts in Poznań: BOOKI. Studying Photobooks, which is going to be an integral part of the festival. It confronts activities in the field of photobook publication carried out by students of several photography institutes in Europe. The Ostrøv Gallery is preparing a zine premiere and an exhibition of Krystian Daszkowski’s work.
_ VENUES:
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- PIX.HOUSE, 35a Głogowska Street, 60-736 Poznań www.pix.house
- Arsenał Gallery, 6 Stary Rynek, 61-772 Poznań www.Arsenał.art.pl
- Department of Photography University of the Arts in Poznań, 20 Janiny Lewandowskiej Street, 60-101 Poznań www.fotografia.uap.edu.pl
- Skala Gallery, 49a Święty Marcin Street, 61-804 Poznań, www.galeriaskala.com
- Ego Gallery, 41/3 Wyspiańskiego Street, 60-751 Poznań www.galeriaego.pl
- Rodríguez Gallery, 13/4 Wodna Street, 61-782 Poznań www.rodriguezgallery.com
- Ostrøv, 25 Św. Marcin Street, 61-816 Poznań, www.ostrov.pl
- School of Form, 18 Głogowska Street, 60-734 Poznań, www.sof.edu.pl
_ DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF FESTIVAL EVENTS:
Mayumi Suzuki
The Restoration Will / The Place to Belong
exhibition running 23 Nov 2018 – 30 Dec 2018
opening 23 Nov 2018, 5 pm
opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-7 pm, Sunday 12-4 pm
curator: Michał Sita
production: Arsenał Gallery, PIX.HOUSE
My parents, who owned a photo studio, went missing after the 2011 tsunami. Our house was destroyed. It was a place not only for working, but also for living. I grew up there. After the disaster, I found my father’s lens, his portfolio, and our family album buried in the mud and under the rubble.
One day, I tried to take a landscape photo with my father’s muddy lens. The image came out dark and blurry, as if seen by someone who had died. Through taking it, I felt as if I could connect this world with the other. I felt like I could have a conversation with my parents, though in fact that is impossible.
The family snapshots I found had faded, the images disappearing. The portraits taken by my father were stained, discolored. These scars are similar to the damage seen in my town, similar to my memories, which I am slowly losing.
Mayumi Suzuki, fragment of the artist’s statement
The exhibition consists of two works. They are both a reaction to tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March, 2011 , destroying Mayumi Suzuki’s hometown, Onagawa. The Restoration Will is a mosaic photobook, based on the history of a photographic studio run by her family for 87 years. It combines surviving scraps of a family album, a photographic portfolio of her father, with contemporary images – which build into a highly intimate narrative. The analysis of clues left by the disaster is so striking because Mayumi Suzuki conducts her search methodically and consistently. She takes a close look at everything that was left in the ruins, examines the cataclysm through material traces left by receding water. She works with pieces of archives accidentally left intact – as these are the only material foundation on which she could build the memory of her missing relatives.
The Place to Belong is another step in the same process of rearranging one’s memory in the face of a disaster. Why do people return to a place that is destroyed by a tsunami one generation after another? How is identity rebuilt in a place like that? What is the quality of memory in a place that needs to be rebuilt from the rubble again and again? The Place to Belong is a project on a huge scale, based on Onagawa residents’ private archives. The exhibition will present fragments of this work-in-progress, supplemented by a limited edition of a newsprint publication, designed especially for the Poznań show by Honza Zamojski.
Ukrainian Photobooks. In between a personal history and politics.
curator: Alina Sandulyak
Rodríguez Gallery 13/4 Wodna Street, 61-782 Poznań
exhibition running: 24 Nov 2018 – 1 Dec 2018
opening 24 Nov 2018, 2 pm
opening hours: Wednesday-Friday 12-7 pm, Saturday 12-5 pm
artists: Alexander Chekmenev, Andriy Dostliev, Vitaly Fomenko, Yulia Krivich, Boris Mikhailov, Yevgeniy Pavlov, Misha Pedan, Yulia Polunina-But, Roman Pyatkovk, Shilo Group
The first photobook in Ukraine was created between 1984 and 1985. These were the last years of the Soviet Union: society was still under pressure, which was mixed with a sense of absurdity and uselessness, and hence also with the feeling of some kind of freedom. In the photobook ‘Unfinished Dissertation’ Boris Mikhailov combined photographs with texts commenting upon everyday life in Kharkov, Ukraine. A sequence of very personal, intimate images merges with gloomy landscapes and pictures of public spaces, building a commentary on the broader social context – an all-encompassing melancholy. Then the next wave of photobooks in Ukraine appeared around 2013 and 2014 – during the Revolution of Dignity and the subsequent war. These were mostly first publications of different authors from the Kharkiv School of Photography of the Soviet era. However, young photographers have also started to think about their own feelings, and to describe their existence in present-day Ukrainian conditions. What are those photographs like? Why and how can personal stories and experiences translate into descriptions of a particular time and place? And how does the photobook format work with that?
Igor Pisuk
Deceitful Reverence
PIX.HOUSE Gallery
35a Głogowska Street , 60-736 Poznań
texts and edit: Agata Pyzik
music: Bartosz Dziadosz
exhibition running: 23 Nov 2018 – 29 Dec 2018
opening 23 Nov 2018, 7.30 pm
opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 5-7 pm, and other times on demand
I shot the first picture of Deceitful Reverence while I was in Lódź, Poland, shortly after returning from a two-month treatment for alcohol addiction. I started shooting intensively, using photography that registered my life as a substitute for alcohol.
Photography allowed me to describe the chaos inside my head, to name different emotional states and feelings, to take a closer look at the loneliness, alienation, love, various anxieties and hopes. Deceitful Reverence is a visual record of emotions, dreams, nightmares and experiences of the simplest elements of reality in their organic, intensive, semi-magical way. Internal states mix with external ones, influencing and shaping the former. I take this series to be a personal poem, a diary, or a therapy.
Igor Pisuk – DECEITFUL REVERENCE
photographs: Igor Pisuk
essay: Agata Pyzik
graphic design: Aneta Kowalczyk
published in English
print run: 500 (including 200 copies issued with Bartosz Dziadosz’s music CD inspired by Igor’s images; and a limited edition of 100 numbered copies issued with the music CD and an archival print signed by the author)
publisher: BLOW UP PRESS
The newest book by BLOW UP PRESS, Deceitful Reverence by Igor Pisuk, is an exceptional representation of tracks guiding internal change. Igor Pisuk reveals his difficult and painful process of leaving alcohol addiction behind, reveals himself and his dealings with the surrounding reality, his search for intimacy and finally his finding of love. All this happens through incredibly suggestive images, depicting the human condition without restraint.
The process Igor went through was a kind of therapy, and pointing the camera lens at himself served as a substitute for alcohol.
A book that summarizes years of the author’s experiences takes the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster ride. The dense and dark atmosphere is constantly there, it doesn’t let you breathe, doesn’t let go. With each turn of the page we enter deeper into the maze of the conscious and subconscious reality of a person…
who constantly gets lost, loses his ground, falls, but gradually regains his feeling of space. He first approaches himself, then he manages to break out into the world of human beings. [1]
What did he see there? Whom did he meet?
[1] Fragment of the text by Agata Pyzik for the exhibition Deceitful Reverence
BOOKI. Studying Photobooks
Skala Gallery, 49a Św. Marcin Street
coordinated by Jarosław Klupś
exhibition running: 24 Nov 2018 – 1 Dec 2018
opening 24 Nov 2018, 4 pm
opening hours: 24 Nov 2018 12-6 pm, 25 Nov 2018, 11 am – 4 pm; 26 Nov – 1 Dec 2018, 2-6 pm
curator’s guided tour: 1 Dec 2018, 4.30 pm
The second international review of photobooks, organized by the Departmentof Photography at the University of theArts in Poznań. The exhibition will present photobooks produced by students and graduates of European art universities over the last two years. Among dozens of publications there will be a significant number of unique copies of zines, books, albums, and scrapbooks, most of which have never been displayed to the general public before.
Kuba Dąbrowski
NOT LIL, NOT YOUNG
Ego Gallery, 41/3 Wyspiańskiego Street, 60-751 Poznań
exhibition running: 23 Nov 2018 – 30 Dec 2018
opening 23 Nov 2018, 7.30 pm
opening hours: Tuesday – Friday 12-7 pm, Saturday 11 am – 2 pm
Scrapbook as the most primary form of a photobook. Kuba Dąbrowski’s scraps of life and magazines. About removal and reshuffle, new rappers’ aliases , basketball and love. The usual themes.
“Scrapbooks look good, says Kuba, there’s a pleasure of analogue mistakes in them. Something’s cut oddly, the paper’s bent somewhere, there’s a tape visible somewhere else. There appear unpredictable clashes between the form and the content. Aside from all that, working with scrapbooks is a pleasant way of passing time.“
For his notebooks the artist uses magazines as well as his own images. A cold matrix of pixels is transformed into a warm analogue reality. A private narrative collides with the reality of mass media.
“Politics is important, since we’re in the middle of a huge change – observes the artist – but it’s hard to grasp that change in an image, it’s hugely abstract”.
In his scrapbooks these contexts appear and exist side by side in a natural manner. Kuba Dąbrowski is convinced that the scrapbook is the most natural, primary form of a book, and a photobook festival is a great scene to share that observation.
Krystian Daszkowski’s zine and exhibition premiere
Ostrøv, 25 Św. Marcin Street
exhibition running: 24 Nov 2018 – 9 Dec 2018
opening 24 Nov 2018, 3 pm
opening hours: 24 Nov 2018, 12-5 pm; 25 Nov 2018, 12-7 pm; other times until 9 Dec 2018 – exhibition opened on demand
exhibition tour guided by the artist: 25 Nov 2018, 12 noon
A sleeping room, a bathroom, a kitchen, a corridor, a balcony, a staircase, a park, a car, a changing room. Spaces to experience alone or in company, useful for daily or unusual activities, good to simply spend time in – to have live sex online, for example. The exhibition will show a photobook catalogue of intimate encounters conducted with the lights on, as well as breaks in between. An accompanying video installation will be exhibited .
video from the previous edition of XPRINT festival | Michał Szalast
_ Organizer of the festival
_ Co-organizers
_ Main partner
_ Partners
co-financed by the City of Poznań
Project: Wielkopolska / TERAZ i galeria fotografii dokumentalnej PIX.HOUSE – realizacja europejskiego programu rezydencyjnego i rozbudowa archiwum co-financed by the Marshal Office of the Wielkopolska Region
Residency of Mayumi Suzuki at PIX.HOUSE Gallery supported by Kompania Piwowarska
Photographic prints for the Mayumi Suzuki, Igor Pisuk and Alina Sandulyak exhibitions made with SOLUTION papers and inks
