Krzysztof Racoń's black and white photographs, many of which are blurred, overexposed along the borders, damaged, or imperfect, focus on people, on the place, on being attached to it and to one another.
This is most of all a story about place which is inhabited by people and at the same time permanently dominated by the titular pipe. Its sudden appearance affected the life style, characters, and mentality of the local residents, as well as transformed the regional landscape. The industry, with all its stench, noise, and grime, reminds people about its existence every single moment […]. If I turn to the people, it is because of the stories they have to tell about this place: the real ones, the imagined ones, and the ones which I will probably never hear. I am interested in their state of mind in relation to the space they live in – Racoń said in an interview for workshopx.org.
In the description of the series, Racoń mentions the poignant apathy and ambivalence that permeate the city, the dead landscape, where the filth, garbage lying around, and the omnipresent stink are consented to.
These […] are also people who, amidst all of this, want to grow peaches or set up mini zoos. It is a bee keeper whose neighbour melts plastic in the courtyard. Or a dirty, tipsy man who won't let anyone go until they buy a few eggs his chickens laid. It is also an ordinary elderly couple that has lived together constantly for the past forty years, however without ever getting married. It is the prostitutes, returning from under the pipe and changing in the forest, so that they look like nice, decent girls at the bus stop.
The Pipe is, however, more than a story of a place. It is also a fresh, interesting look at the economic history of Poland and its significant stages – like raising of the Katowice Steelworks and the growth of the Dąbrowski Basin – which are connected to big social transformations: demographic migration, construction of large housing estates, and changes in the rural regions.
In 2013, Racoń's project received the first prize in the Vienna International Photo Awards and International Photo Awards competitions.
Krzysztof Racoń (b. w 1982 in Nowy Sącz) – a graduate of Cultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University, the Kraków University of Economics, as well as the Academy of Photography in Kraków. He is a student at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (Czech Republic). In 2011, he was awarded in the Lens on Development competition (organized by the EU) for his reportage about a school for blind children in Kibeho, Rwanda. In 2012-13, he participated in the Mentoring Programme for documentary photographers, organized by Sputnik Photos – an international documentary photographers collective. In 2015, he was a laureat of Kolga Photowards and of BZ WBK Press Foto, for his project about the Rożnów and Czchów Lakes. He has taken part in group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. He lives and works in Kraków.
Sources: krzysztofracon.pl, workshopx.org, ed. AS, 11.08.2015, transl. Ania Micińska, August 2015