It all started in Kłodzko, in the second half of the nineteen-nineties – remembers Bart Pogoda (born 1976). I was already a student then, but in my free time I tried to escape the greyness of Poland by hitchhiking around Europe. From those trips I brought back notes and photographs and didn’t really know what to do with them. I decided to publish them myself.
On a wave of enthusiasm brought on by the arrival of the Internet in Poland, Pogoda established a web site in 1997, a prototype of his blog that he set up in 2000. The personal history of the artist’s travels – so far to 78 countries – has become increasingly photographic, thanks to which he soon won devoted followers and imitators.
I left the country in 2001. I illustrated my backpacker’s journey through both Americas in the blog. I first jotted down notes on paper, and then I digitalized them in the few cyberc@fes I could find in South America. Thanks to the first digital ixus model (2 megapixels) I could regularly take photographs along my journey and include them in my blog.
Today, in times of digital photography and popular blogger services, Bart Pogoda’s reports sound like something from another era.With the passing of the years, the artist has increasingly replaced his reports from his expeditions with photographs of the places he has visited and the people he has encountered. He has also made the occasional videos. The latter may be a consequence of his enrolling at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava.
For several years Pogoda has also made professional sessions for advertising and film agencies. His photographs have been published in the columns of such titles as Podróże, Pani, CNN Traveller, Zwierciadło, Wired, The Guardian, Newsweek, Aktivist, Planet Mag, Morning Calm Korean Airlines, Kalejdoskop LOT, Traveller, Przekrój and Viva!. Since 2009 he has completed a number of projects with Silvia Pogoda, among other things a staged series entitled Identity Paranoia, 2010.