aleksandra_wojcik

The project began in 2010 with my city night walks. At that time, I had been photographing a particular location by the River Thames and my journeys than encouraged me to travel from the source of the river to its estuary. In my work I didn't want to photograph the famous landmarks. Being inspired by Turner and Whistler paintings I wanted to capture the atmosphere and 'temperature' of the places I visited. ' The River Song ' is based on my own experience of the English landscape. For me, as someone from another country who decided to live in the UK, the activity of walking and exploring the river turned into the process of becoming familiar and engaging with my new home. The project itself became a collective memory and my photographs came to be records of particular moments of my observations. The water is symbolic of a transformation and I feel that my images not only capture the possibilities of the places I photographed but also represent a change in myself.

This project began with the simple idea of allowing photography to be an integral part of my life, like eating or breathing. I wanted to visualise my thoughts and intimate moments and use the tool of photography as a language. The aim wasn't to document my life, but rather to construct images that would suggest situations which could happen or had happened. I found inspiration in everyday life and through photographic practice I have been exploring 'myself' and my 'memory'.'Postcards of my Life' is a personal journey through my mind and feelings. Subjective and episodic frames have no particular order and become traces of my explorations. It's like a dialogue between inside me and outside me. Questions: 'What makes me a human and what doesn't', 'Who I seem to be', 'Why I am what I am' accompanied me day by day while working on this project. I came back to the original idea of using photography as a language. It was this that inspired me to produce a body of work as a set of postcards. We use them to communicate, and as souvenirs which translates as 'memory' in French.

The London set is an edit from two projects I'd been working on from 2010. It all began with my city night walks and my work explores places located by the river Thames. Being inspired by Whistler's nocturne paintings I wanted to capture the atmosphere and 'temperature' of places I visited. It is also my own journey through the shadows of the city, night and fear. Buildings sites from everyday places seem to turn into landscapes from other planets at night and I was fascinated by the artificial land created by humans.

Being inspired by Turner and Whistler paintings I wanted to capture the atmosphere and 'temperature' of the places I visited. ' The River Song ' is based on my own experience of the English landscape. For me, as someone from another country who decided to live in the UK, the activity of walking and exploring the river turned into the process of becoming familiar and engaging with my new home. The project itself became a collective memory and my photographs came to be records of particular moments of my observations. The water is symbolic of a transformation and I feel that my images not only capture the possibilities of the places I photographed but also represent a change in myself.

Fernweh "an ache for distant places" / is a strong desire for or impulse to wander or travel and explore the world.. When traveling in Thailand I felt that I have to do something, get somewhere but now I understood that being somewhere was just enough, our activities not always have to end up with a wise statement. Pleasure of hanging around, being transported by a boat, enjoying time that seems to be constant, flat and locked in simple beauty … http://www.aleksandrawojcik.com/?gallery=fernweh