Krzysztof Gierałtowski's Polish Individualities series is drawn from the publication gifted to the Polish National Library in 2009, which exists in only 15 numbered copies. The portfolio was created under the initiative of the Walery Rzewuski Museum of the History of Photography in Kraków under the patronage of the National Library. According to Krzysztof Gierałtowski's wishes, the album may go into its second run, making another 100 copies available. The project is the first post-war publication of a photography portfolio in Polish history.
The artist humbly describes his portfolio as "an excerpt of the chronic of Polish intelligentsia from 1968-2009".
Celebrities included in the collection are writers, actors, painters, filmmakers and musicians, such as: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Nina Andrycz, Jerzy Grzegorzewski, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Tadeusz Kantor, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Witold Lutosławski, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Czesław Miłosz, Roman Polański, Piotr Skrzynecki, Leopold Tyrmand, Andrzej Wajda, Lech Wałęsa, Karol Wojtyła, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz.
Professor Andrzej Rottermund describes the series:
The photographer's ability to drown himself into the hidden soul of his model constitutes without a doubt the unusual creative force of Krzysztof Gierałtowski's portrait art.
Only three statesmen and politicians are featured, but quite notable ones: Pope John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa and Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Most portraits were made in the 1970s and 1980s, and most of the figures captured by Gierałtowski have passed away since.
Gierałtowski's own hall of fame is given an added dimension through the artist's own involvement in the photographic process. This creative common denominator lies within the photographer's passion for unveiling the most hidden emotions, desires and dreams of the figures he chose to shoot. However, the artist doesn't reveal the criteria of selection of photographs within his portfolio. Instead, Gierałtowski prefers to comment the nature of the encounter itself, describing the atmosphere he discovered or tried to find without success, his artistic failures and aspirations.
Everyone has eyes, a mouth and a nose. But only the frozen grimace, a flame in the eye, the structure of the face, or the presence of some magical object captured through the camera that, along with the lenses perspective, the frame, the light and colour we can create a subjective portrait. The latter doesn't claim objective reality, it is rather a committed photographer's personal impression as an author. The conflict regarding the essence of the portrait, the measure within which lies the presence of the photographer and the model is one of its major qualities.
Krzysztof Gierałtowski, 2009
Ryszard Kapuściński would describe Gierałtowski's nature as a portraitist, as one of the very few in the world to dedicate himself to depict his subject with such consistence and consciousness. The man, the human being is his ultimate and exclusive passion, not as compared to others, but to himself. In that sense, somehow one could suggest that Krzysztof Gierałtowski pursues for his own aspirations, his own emotions and ego within the captured grins of his models, using them as consensual subjects of his projections. But what eventually strikes the viewer is the overwhelming presence of the actual person portrayed, that fills the entire frame.
"Polish Individualities" is organised within the Focus on Central Europe of Paris Photo 2010.
The exhibition runs between November 19-27, 2010.
Source: www.institutpolonais.fr