The Katowice JazzArt Festival 2020 promised to be amazing. At the invitation of Martyna van Nieuwland / Katowice Miasto Ogrodów, I was supposed to move into the space of the sounds of jazz and make a series of portraits of the artists taking part in the festival. I called it Faces of JazzArt. It was a beautiful proposition, because I was able to realise the theme within the framework of my One People Story project, on film, with a medium-format analogue camera, consistent with the whole series I have been creating since 2012 (you can find information about the project HERE).
At the beginning of March 2020, there was a concert weekend called before and then.. we remember what happened. All concerts were cancelled and my project was put on hold.
Over the following months, whenever possible, intimate events were held as part of the festival or artists gave concerts to the exclusion of the public, in front of the camera. In both 2020 and 2021, the festival took place between lockdowns, in a reduced version.
In order to be able to realise the initial objectives of this collaboration, I adapted to the changed conditions and took some portraits in 2020 and some in 2021.
Among those who stood in front of my lens then were Mikołaj Trzaska, Macio Moretti, Joanna Duda, Morris Kliphuis, Pola Dwurnik and Christopher Dell. And it is this meeting with Christopher that I would like to mention.
In spring 2021, Christopher Dell comes to Katowice for an artist residency as part of the festival. He is a German musician, a vibraphonist, but also an urbanist. As part of his residency, he is to spend a few days in my city. The time is not easy, the public spaces are closed, but Christopher has his time filled to the brim. He explores the urban space, talks to architects, musicians and artists, and creates a solo improvisation. He also finds time to meet with me, so I have the chance to portray him.
The portraits in the One People Story series are created quite spontaneously. I arrange the photo set in response to a situation, a place, a character I have met. In Christopher’s case, I knew that I wanted his portrait to be created with Katowice in the background; after all, the context of the city for an urbanist is obvious.
We meet in a building on Sejm Śląski Square, so I suggest we go outside and find a suitable set in the area. At the last minute I take a stool. Christopher is a tall man and I don’t want to photograph him from my lower perspective 😉
We don’t look for a place for long, we put the stool at the corner of Ligonia and Sienkiewicza streets, I ask Christopher to sit down. For a while I set the parameters in the camera, measure the light, frame. After a while, I count to three… and it’s done.
Another portrait is created, but I prefer this one.
The same day or the next, we spend a pleasant time in my Portrait Studio, which has replaced a café to us. We drink coffee and talk together with a few people, enjoying this spontaneous meeting, at a time so unfavourable for meetings.
Some time later I develop the negatives, print this photograph on my favourite paper cardboard and send it to Berlin to Christopher. When I ask for an address to send the portrait – no, I don’t mean by email 😉 – I usually spring a surprise. And this time it is the same.
This is where the story could have ended, but another pleasant thing happened to me. More than a year later, I was contacted by the editor-in-chief of the German magazine JazzPodium. He wanted to publish Christopher’s portrait on the cover.
Among our arrangements, I was assured that the editors would make every effort to publish the photograph in its original frame, i.e. square. I was very keen on this. I treat each photograph in this series as a closed collection. This includes the frame, which is created by scanning a slightly larger area than just the frame of the photograph. I frame precisely when taking the photograph and do not crop it later.
My joy was great when this edition arrived from Germany. I think that keeping the full frame, arranging it on the cover and draping it in colour, looks great. The magazine was published in October 2022.
