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Tekst
A winner of the PDN Emerging Photographer photo competition, Karolina Ćwik is also a two-time finalist of the Athens Photo Festival. In 2019, she was shortlisted in the TIFF Open competition. Her work has appeared in publications such as Photo District News, Calvert Journal and The Hidden Photo. Currently a student at the Institute of Creative Photography at the University of Silesia in Opava, she is a graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Wrocław. www.karocwik.com
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Question
Michał Dąbrowski (MD): What do you remember most from the beginning of the pandemic?
Odpowiedź
Karolina Ćwik (KĆ): I remember the various conspiracy theories, even though I was trying not to read them. Maybe it’s strange to hear something like this from a mother, but I wasn’t worried for my family or my children – I was only maybe worried about my parents. I was thinking about the state of the world, about those thousands of plastic gloves and single-use masks – that made me feel anxious. On the other hand, the air was noticeably cleaner, and we could hear more birds singing in the city. The fact that nature recovered so quickly made me feel optimistic.
Question
MD: Did the shutdowns affect how things work in your family?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: Compared to before the pandemic, it hasn’t changed very much. I have very young children, so the only real difference was that my older son stopped going to preschool, so all the fuss about dropping him off there went away. Dyzio probably won’t be going back there till September, so I’ve had to learn how to function under these new circumstances.
We gained some things – the long, lazy mornings, breakfasts and conversations together. Everyone did what they wanted – that’s how we celebrated life in confinement. It was sad, difficult, and cramped sometimes, but we’ve managed, and this situation has brought us closer.
My husband is a photojournalist, so he would go out to a deserted city and come back to us with information from the outside world – that was part of our typical pandemic day too. This is how we learned about what was happening outside of our microcosm.
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MD: How has the pandemic affected your day-to-day life – have you felt more tired?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: I do get tired sometimes, but that’s just motherhood, not the quarantine. My children were born almost one year to the next, so I’ve been a full-time mother for years – but I manage somehow. Essentially, I have less time for myself. There’s room for my stuff when Krzysiek is taking care of the boys or when they go to sleep.
Recently, I started a business that I can run without leaving the house. I have an online vintage-clothing store and take the ‘sales photos’ with my husband. I’m the model – a tired mother at the end of a long day. My friends laugh that you can see the bags under my eyes a little. The quarantine has probably made that worse.
Question
MD: What was it like at first, staying at home?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: We stayed at home because we had to. That was crazy. Usually, spending time with your children is a bit different – you meet other people, other children, and you go out into the world. Now we were stuck with each other. You know, our house isn’t very big – we living in 60 m2 with two small children. Even though it was tought to hold out in one place, I couldn’t not take photos – it was just such a juicy situation. We did all manner of crazy things; we built castles; we created weird micro-playrooms. All this with crying, screaming, reading books and watching cartoons. It became our routine. We were together all of the time.
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MD: What was your approach in taking these photos?
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KĆ: First, I observed situations at home, and then, usually the next day, I set up the shots. It’s not a purely documentary approach – I’m not used to having the camera on me all the time. The quarantine was really inspiring for me, but I also created these scenes.
Question
MD: You’re a young mother who found time for artistic work in forced isolation – that seems like a rare combination to me.
Odpowiedź
KĆ: On Instagram, I’ve seen some beautiful and very good work by women. The more serious, more involved projects like these will probably be the ones to see the light of day. I really wouldn’t say that women who are mothers have been too busy taking care of their children to do anything else during the pandemic, because that’s not true, that’s not how it is. I haven’t noticed any fewer women taking photos, but I’m also quite interested in motherhood, so I probably pay more attention to topics like these. I follow a lot of wonderful photographers who are women.
Question
MD: How have you talked with your children about the pandemic?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: I explained to them that there’s this virus which has appeared, but that it will be going away soon. I told them, first and foremost, not to be afraid, but also what we need to be careful about: that we have to eat well, wash our hands, ventilate the apartment, sleep a lot, and that way, this virus won’t affect us. I wanted to calm them down and allow them to get to know about the virus somehow, because they were seeing these masks, the covered faces, and they were asking me why.
It seems to me that we’re living in an age where will be more and more dangers like this. I wanted to familiarise them with this situation, so that it wouldn’t become some awful thing dominating our lives. I wanted to get them comfortable with it. Dyzio even built a virus out of LEGOs.
Question
MD: What does his virus look like?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: It’s a kind of tower with an odd little windmill.
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MD: Tell me about your pandemic diary.
Odpowiedź
KĆ: I’ve always had a lot of notebooks; I keep notes, and I draw. During the pandemic, someone sent me a lecture by Alec Soth [an American documentary photographer associated with Magnum Photos] on books. He showed a lot of great things in it, but ultimately, he showed his photography scrapbooks, and I said: wow! I had an empty album on a shelf, one I got from a friend once, and thanks to Soth, I started adding to it. It was a lot of fun for me, and now, I can’t stop.
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MD: So the notebook gives you something to live on, artistically speaking?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: Yes, that’s a good way to put it – to live on. One plus is that when I’m working on it, I don’t spend time in front of the computer or on the phone.
Question
MD: Let’s talk about your other projects.
Odpowiedź
KĆ: For the Dobro Narodowe (National Good) project, I took photos of other mothers. This was an important experience for me, even though I never finished the series. Today, I think it was a big and necessary step to start photographing myself. It’s much more difficult, but I think, thanks to that, I’ve gone much deeper into this topic, without no limits.
Question
MD: What about your ‘Don’t Look At Me’ project?
Odpowiedź
KĆ: This was my first major project like that. Some of the images in this series are from a few years ago, but I made many of them during the quarantine. This is a personal, autobiographical story about love and doubt – and my fears and anxieties related to motherhood.
Why motherhood again? This is my world now, so this topic is really personal for me. I’m a mother now, and in a time when I’m so immersed in all of this, my photos are going to reflect that. I’ve always approached photography this way – I’m not interested in any other way of working.
Podpis obrazka
'Don't look at me', photo: Karolina Ćwik
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Podpis obrazka
'Don't look at me', photo: Karolina Ćwik
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Podpis obrazka
'Don't look at me', photo: Karolina Ćwik
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Podpis obrazka
'Don't look at me', photo: Karolina Ćwik
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Question
MD: The pandemic has turned out to be an extremely creative time for you.
Odpowiedź
KĆ: I’ve found peace and quiet in myself, and some time to reflect. Normally, my home is all in a rush – children, preschool, errands. When we were stuck at home, I started to think about myself. What kind of mother am I? What does that mean to me? What’s my sphere of influence, and what’s happening beyond me that I can’t change?
I also had more space to observe the extraordinary father-son relationship – that’s what my diary is about. I was thinking about my parents – what I got from them, and what I can or should give to them in return.
The pandemic calmed me down. I was glad that the world was slowing down, that we were stopping the pointless shopping, that we were coming back to ourselves. A lot happened during the lockdown. I really opened myself up to that time, and thanks to that, I have these photos – the kind of photos I’d been searching for for a long time.
Podpis obrazka
'Don't look at me', photo: Karolina Ćwik
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Tekst
Interview originally conducted in Polish by Michał Dąbrowski, translated by Lauren Dubowski, Jul 2020
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