‘Time scraps’

Andrzej Popielski – journalist, enthusiast and practitioner of artistic photography

I started with an apprenticeship in the darkroom and I know what an enlarger and chemical reagents are. After 2003, I moved from the environment of analog photography to the digital world – like most older photographers. Since that period, almost every photo of every photographer has its own history of more or less digital interference.

I have been photographing with digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras for many years. I hasten to explain. “Photoshop” doesn’t take pictures for me. Some suspect that thanks to computer processing I have achieved more surprising results. They were usually created using the cameras themselves – often a single press of the shutter button. Poetic license. You can achieve a lot with camera functions, the way of shooting, filters. I usually use a graphic program for retouching – without changing the content of the image in documentary type photography, but in creative, artistic type, this requirement does not apply.

Some of the photographs – sometimes visually similar to painting and graphics – were made by manipulating the parameters and methods of photographing. I like experiments; especially with movement. I treat creative photography and my own photos as artistic material to show my image of reality and emotional states. I am one of those photographers for whom the end result is more important than the method of achieving it. I’m not interested in a world where a photo looks exactly as it really is.

More information about me in the section: “Artist statement”.