The artist graduated in photography from various universities abroad, including the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Kent (2005-2010), and Northumbria University in Newcastle (2011-2014).
After completing a PhD at the latter in 2014 she started to work between the UK and in the Alps. The main aim of her practice is to explore the potential of photography to be understood as a medium that creates images which leave physical traces of the photographed reality rather than being only a visual representation of an object.
The artist builds her own cameras. She uses both historically well-known techniques and those that expose to the camera items that were most probably never used before as photographic material. She aspires to use the medium of photography in a way that shows the very same view that the artist sees at the moment of exposition.
Kozłowska explains:
I am interested in how those unique auratic artefacts affected by rays of light reflected off the scene in front of the lens can signify that which escapes pictorial representation: embodied perception of the environment or the durational experience of long-distance walking.
Her usage of photography is characterised by an intentional resignation of pace, work comfort, and control over the final effect; all of which define the contemporary facilities and materials. In their place the artist introduces extremely long exposure times (sometimes lasting for few weeks), exceedingly high use of energy needed to take each and every photograph (e.g., a day of mountain hiking to set up a camera), uncertainty of acquiring a satisfying result (or a result at all), and a lack of full control over the exposition parameters, such as composition and exposure level.
In 2014 the artist finished her three-year-long research project titled Taking Photographs Beyond the Visual Paper as a Material Signifier in Photographic Indexicality in which the artist explores the status of photography as a physical trace of reality rather than purely an image. The project was undertaken in the Alps – the artist made her own photographic paper from plants and exposed it with a handmade camera made of natural sources as well.
Carved by Light was created in 2015 for the 150th anniversary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn by a British climbing team and its Swiss guides. The achievement was largely discussed in the whole Europe and was perceived as a culminating accomplishment of the golden age of alpinism.
Kozłowska defines her aim in such a way:
Combining traditional large-format cameras and modern industrial offset printing materials, this method is the next step in my continued investigation of the potential of photographs to exist not only as images, functioning in a sphere of meanings that are exclusively human, but also as physical traces that engage an embodied and imaginative response in viewers.
With her work Kozłowska draws attention to the first triumphs of mountain climbing, simultaneously exploring a yet rarely used photographic technique that in its time-consuming and physically demanding process of creation reminds of the first alpinists’ and the early photographers’ (of the first half of the 19th century) achievements. The artist chose more than thirty peaks in the highest mountain ranges of the Alps (the Mont Blanc massif, the Valais Alps and the Bernese Alps) which she photographed with a handmade large-format camera that exposed a light-sensitive polymer plate directly in-camera for a period ranging from several hours to several days.
Selected exhibitions:
- 2016 Mountains, Treshold Artspace, Perth Concert Hall, Perth, UK, group show
- 2015 Forecast Forum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, project proposal presentation
- 2014 Berg-Druck, Baselgia San Nicla, Strada, Switzerland, solo show; Taking Photographs Beyond the Visual, Ex-Libris Gallery, Newcastle, UK solo show
- 2013 AHRC Conference, Gallery North, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, group show
- 2012 Sheffield Photographic Competition, Hutton’s Buildings, Sheffield, group show
- 2011 By the Aare, Altes Spital, Solothurn, Switzerland post-residency, solo show; Queenborough and Rushenden: 360º water, Sheerness, Kent, UK, post-residency solo show
Source: kozlowska.eu, February 2016, translated by Antoni Wiśniewski, February 2016