Portrety Andrzeja Dragana z jednej strony przerazaja, z drugiej zas uzalezniaja. Chce sie do nich wracac, zglebiac poszczegolne nieludzko realistyczne elementy zdjecia. Sila detalu, czystosc i krystalicznosc koloru, mroczne swiatlo, to elementy malarstwa holenderskiego. I tu chyba lezy sila zdjec Andrzeja. Fotografowanie tak znanych nam postaci wspolczesnych jak David Lynch czy Jan Peszek w manierze starego, rembrandtowskiego portretu zaskakuje odbiorce przywyklego do odbioru wspolczesnej fotografii - bliskiej spontanicznej ekspresji, uciekajacej od rzeczywistosci poprzez przerysowanie efektow "malarskich" takich jak poruszenie, zamazanie obrazu, sprowadzenie go do barw monochromatycznych lub fotografii dokumentalnej. Prace Dragana pozostaja w pamieci na dlugo, a przede wszystkim wyrozniaja sie sposrod tysiecy otaczjacych nas zdjec.

Tomek Sikora

Andrzej Dragan's portraits terrify on one hand and addict on the other. One has a strong need to come back and penetrate inhumanly realistic elements of the photographs going deeper and deeper. Power and clarity of the detail, and crystal purity of the color, sober and gloomy light are the elements of Dutch paintings. This is probably the source of the impact of Andrzej's photographs. Portraying so well-known characters as David Lynch, Mads Mikkelsen or Jerzy Urban in the manner of old, Rembrandt style surprises the viewer used to contemporary photography which is so close to spontaneous expression, escaping from reality through exaggerated effects such as movement, blurring the image or taking the colors down to unnatural scale. Dragan's works remain inside one's mind for a long time and most of all - they stand out among thousands of others images surrounding us.

Tomek Sikora

Alegorie & Makabreski to osiemnascie portretow (2004-2007) przedstawiajacych miedzy innymi Davida Lyncha trzymajacego kure, Madsa Mikkelsena ogladajacego embrion kota, Jana Peszka nad starym zegarkiem i Jerzego Urbana z naga kobieta i cygarem. Prezentowany zbior jest proba zmierzenia sie autora z przeslaniem pewnego portugalskiego przyslowia, mowiacego: ci, ktorzy widza twarze, nie widza serc. Ekspozycja stanowi podsumowanie ostatnich trzech lat pracy i zawiera rowniez kilka fotografii nigdy dotad nie publikowanych. Choc sa to jedynie proste portrety, wykonano je w taki sposob, ze niejednokrotnie wywolywaly u ogladajacych senne koszmary. Mimo to w imieniu organizatorow i swoim goraco zapraszam na wernisaz i zycze udanej konsumpcji prac na zywo.

Andrzej Dragan

Allegories & Macabresques is eighteen portraits (2004-2007) introducing David Lynch holding a hen, Mads Mikkelsen watching an embrio of a little cat, Jan Peszek over and old watch or Jerzy Urban with a naked woman and a Cuban cigar. The presented collection is an effect of a struggle of the author with a message of Portugese proverb that says: those who see faces do not see hearts. It is also a summary of three years of work. The exhibition includes also few unpublished works. Althought they are all simple portraits it happened a few times that viewers have been troubled by nightmares after watching the images. Nonetheless on behalf of the organizers and myself it is my pleasure to invite everyone to visit the vernisage and consume my photographs live.

Andrzej Dragan

Otwarcie premierowej wystawy polaczone z wernisazem odbedzie sie 7. wrzesnia 2007 o godzinie 20. w Galerii Lipinskich w Warszawie (Aleje Jerozolimskie 63, naprzeciw hotelu Marriott), organizatorem jest firma Reinhold i Europejska Akademia Fotografii. Sponsorami wystawy sa Epson, Hahnemuehle i Kapa, ktorzy dostarcza profesjonalne materialy do druku i oprawy fotografii oraz Book & Art, ktora przygotuje najwyzszej klasy wydruki archiwalne. Wystawa potrwa do 28. wrzesnia, i bedzie jednoczesnie prezentowana w galerii warszawskiego metra Pociag do Sztuki (stacja Swietokrzyska). Wiecej informacji o autorze i jego pracach znajduje sie na stronie andrzejdragan.com.

Opening of the exhibition and vernisage begins at September, 7th 2007, at 8 p.m. in Lipinski Gallery in Warsaw. It is organised by Reinhold and European Academy of Photography and sponsored by Epson, Hahnemuehle, and Kapa who provide high-end materials for photography printing and Book & Art preparing the highest quality archival gallery prints. The exhibit will last till September, 28th and in the same time will be shown in Warsaw's subway gallery Pociag do Sztuki. More information on the author and his works can be found at andrzejdragan.com.

Art is artificial - an interview with Andrzej by Paola Bonini

"First of all, let me just make it clear that I really don't like taking photographs" says the young Polish photographer and quantum physicist Andrzej Dragan while answering the first, general question about his work. "To be quite frank, I dislike it". And although I am convinced that his work definitely goes beyond the borders of mere photography, I admit I am a bit puzzled at hearing this statement.

Well, that's a good start, Andrzej...
It sounds weird, I know. When my friends ask me to take them a picture and I refuse, they are disappointed, but I simply don't like photographing. I'm not even neutral about that - I actually dislike it. And yet, for some unknown reason that I still haven't understood, sometimes I happen to run into someone I really want to photograph, because his or her face looks interesting to me, but that's quite unusual. In the beginning I just used to ask him or her to let me take a photograph, after having a short conversation with them - I might very well have met them in the street, for example. The whole thing didn't generally take longer than a few minutes. Then I have gradually taken on a more selective attitude in choosing the people I'm interested in, and now I take about one photo a month.

Do you always carry your camera with you?
No, I don't like that at all. I only take it when I'm looking for some faces for my portraits. I know many photographers always carry their cameras with them - I've heard that Cartier-Bresson before a breakfast had already used up a few rolls - but that's not my case. I take very few pictures and very quickly, I'm not at all looking for people or photographs all the time. This is just a beginning of the process. I spend a very long time working on the material - it can take me up to one month to process a single photo, as it has recently been the case with a portrait of a Danish celebrity actor - Mads Mikkelsen. I spend most of this time watching and thinking, and usually after many hours I'm able to decide which one of the few portraits I've taken I intend to use. That's when the digital post-production process begins. In some respects this method resembles painting, because it's just as if I used a brush - only, my brush is a digital one. I try no to add any new elements, I rather enhance or underline some aspects of the image.

Once you've chosen and studied your photograph, do you already know what specific result you want to obtain?
Not always, the purpose of observing is precisely to find out what I want to underline in that picture, in order to be able to try and work on it. Sometimes I already know it while I'm taking the photograph, in which case I go back home, I plunge into a twenty-four-hour working session and that's it. One day I was on a bus, I began to talk with a man and noticed that when he spoke he widened his eyes - he had deep, impressive eyes - but when he was silent they were not that vivid, less visible, less alive, less interesting. On that occasion, I immediately understood that if I wanted to show the vividness of those eyes I had to photograph them while he was speaking and then assemble the face with a silent mouth. I just combined two images - opened eyes and closed mouth. The result is the portrait of a man who speaks only with his eyes - interesting and trivial in the same time. I already knew this while I was taking the pictures, so the processing phase went much faster. But many other times I don't exactly know what I want to obtain, so I just try to keep my mind open and to find something interesting.

You've mentioned portraits. What do you think they are?
Portrait is an illusion of looking at a real person. People expect portraits to reveal something about the persons and their stories. I don't know whether this is true, whether it can be generally true, but if it were, it would be impossible to portray someone you don't know: how can you say something about a stranger? In that case, the portrait might just reveal the photographer's impression of that person, but that impression might have very little, if anything, in common with that individual. I don't care about the definitions. I do what I do. If people don't want to call them portraits, that's ok by me. I'm not interested in names.

Is there any conceptual common ground between your career as an artist and as a physicist?
Well, first of all I would like to underline I don't consider myself an artist. I don't like the sophisticated background of this word. But to answer your question, I don't know whether there is a connection, but I certainly was educated by several years of scientific studies. For example, I know that sometimes I can get disturbing because, if someone says something that doesn't sound true to me, I start to investigate right away, and this can make people nervous. But the thing is that when people - including myself - say something, most of the times they get it wrong. You may say that the Earth goes around the Sun in circles. But if you carefully study this working hypothesis, you realize it's not correct. It's really hard to say something true. Science is a method to investigate which statements are not true. What comes out is that only very few statements can be labelled not to be false. And scientists are aware that even these might be only temporarily 'true', because after a while you find out that after all they weren't, and something else becomes true instead. So you see, it's difficult to say what is true and what is not. There's little truths I am 100% convinced about, and there are truths I think I can partially guess - let's say I have different degrees of certainty about different phenomena - but what I'm interested in is becoming aware of a certainty of my knowledge. I have absolutely no idea about the truthfulness of some realities, but I have to accept it, I have no choice. I prefer not knowing that being wrong or believing. And obviously I don't know most things, but I want to be able to distinguish between those I have some sort of idea about and those I cannot know at all. This is what matters in science. But I'm not quite sure this has to do with photography. When I take pictures I don't pay any attention to that, I don't think about truth. Some people don't even agree about calling my work photography, because according to them it does not obey to certain rules. But I don't subscribe to those rules. Rules are basically prescriptions to those who cannot think themself. Ironically, 'breaking some rules' has become a new rule in photography - what a nonsense. Obligation to follow rules or truths in photography is not even a thought. It is some sort of ridiculous thought protesis. Just think of black and white photography - I mean, did you ever see anyone on the street in black and white?

But science also assumes that different truths can be parallel and coexist as alternatives...
But not if they are self-contradictory. You know, quantum mechanics seems idiotic to a beginner. Great scientists such as Einstein, Planck, De Broglie, and Schrödinger elaborated this theory and subsequently abandoned it, because they couldn't believe it neither... It was just so weird, so absurd that there was no margin to support it.

Physics that gets rejected as metaphysics...
The funny thing is that after many years of tests the theory turned out not to be wrong. The scientists simply had to accept this uncomfortable fact that the Universe is so weird... I think this proves my point: what people think to be true or not, even if you are Einstein, has little to do with reality. Our opinion about truth is not the most important - the empirical method is. Truth can only be discussed when it can be tested, otherwise it's meaningless. So what a silly expectation that it should have anything to do with photography, which is basically not a very ambitious, in this comparison, way of entertaining? Art is not natural, not true. As its name says - art is artificial way of bringing joy, even in Polish - 'sztuka jest sztuczna'. Feeding, defecating and breeding are natural - art is artificial.

And yet the subject seems to interest you. Or at least you seem to be interested in playing with it.
I am. For example, only one of all the pictures I have taken may be considered to be 'absolutely true': it's the portrait of an anorexic girl, an eighteen-year-old model, very tall and pretty, but very skinny. I almost did not process it at all in the post-production phase. I left the image unspoiled - just the way it was. And this is one of the pictures people trust less. They don't trust the only truth I propose them and suspect that I present an easy computer trick. It's interesting to play with this concept of truth, because it always turns out to be a big misunderstanding. Another example: the portrait of my favourite model represented as Christ. I had an enlightening conversation with someone about this picture. She felt repelled by it for religious reasons, but I asked her: ok, you don't like it, but what do you see in it? And she said: I see a Christ. Is he a Christ, are you sure - I asked? Well, of course it is not himself, I see someone posing as a Christ. But that's obviously not Christ, just a model, someone else. He doesn't even look good. Ha has ferocious eyes. It can't even be a good personification of Christ. There's nothing true in this work. If the wounds were true, he would look in pain, but he doesn't. He is silent, peaceful, he wears his thorn crown, which is also fake - its actually made of plastic. And more - his gesture refers to Saint Thomas asking Christ if his wounds are true - he didn't believe before he could touch them. Our 'Christ' points with his finger showing his wounds to be real, while we all know they are only a make-up, special FX, a cheat. Everything here is a fake - she concluded - there is even a plain photographic background suggesting that this is all only a pose in front of a camera. And actually this statement is also false, because there is just one single thing on this image that is actually true - just one true wound among the others. A scar of a surgical operation that the model underwent several years before, but you must observe it very carefully if you want to make it out. The only real thing that matters - a faint reflection of a real story of the past hidden within fakery. This interaction between what is true and what is not is so misleading... and shows my point. The image is called 'Allegory on the Truth'.

Apart from your scientific training, can you detect artistic inspirations or sources in your activities?
At the begining - no. Now - I can't tell. I would do anything in order not to see any photos in my life. I think it's not good to be submerged by them. You could also say that a bit of inspiration is not bad, but if you think of it, it also sets limits. In the beginning, when I was completely unaware of what the others were doing, it was wonderful. I just did what I wanted to do, drawing on the object or the person I was interested in. Now that I know something about other people's work, I'm starting to be influenced by it. For example, I stopped doing certain things because I see other people started trying to follow the same path. My working field is limited in this respect. I'm not interested in repeating - myself on anyone else. The best suggestion I can take is not to take suggestions. I have a hobby, though. I go to the cinema to see "Lost Highway" by David Lynch everytime they show it. Anywhere and anytime. I've seen it already 17 times at the cinemas, not to mention countless times on DVD. I love this movie. It's awesome. This is something I might call a profound inspiration.

That sounds more like an obsession than like a hobby...
Yes. But it doesn't do any harm!

Do you like reading?
Some books have deeply changed me, for example "Am Anfang war der Wasserstoff" (In the Beginning was Hydrogen) by Hoimar von Ditfurth. I've used to like popular scientific vulgarization: Richard Dawkins was one of my favourite authors in this respect before his last book, but lately I've been mainly reading articles by a short list of my favourite authors. Anyway, it's strange, right now I'm in front of a wall covered with books, but I must admit that at a certain point, I don't exactly remember when, I stopped massive reading and became more selective. I look for titles that are likely to broaden my insight, and nothing more. At a certain moment, reading began to disappoint me.

Why?
Because I realized that what I was left with after reading a book were just a few sentences... They might as well be fundamental sentences, but we shouldn't underestimate the fact that we forget most of what we read. It's the same reason why I don't study languages: I forget them, I've a very limited memory, and I'm disappointed with the idea of spending a lot of time on something that finally doesn't leave me anything. Not long ago - for a few minutes I could not recall Hitler's first name. I would start again massive reading if I was given a perfect memory instead of a crap I currently own.

You want concrete results.
Yes, of course. For example, I'm not someone who reads just for the pleasure of doing so. Therefore, I don't like novels. Sometimes they're interesting, even important, but they are a form of entertainment that seldomly influences my inside. The emotions that are waken up inside me - most of the time I consider them too shallow to be important. Therefore right now I to get into the classics - just selected masterpieces. I know they are crucial to many people, but in some way this kind of leisure looks empty to me. For the same reason, I seldomly follow the arts. I'm not necessarily attracted by photography, and I only like very few paintings. When I was a child I visited Tate Gallery in London and I got bored to death, walking for hours surrounded by all those pictures that everybody thinks to be wonderful. But at one moment I was totally conquered by one single painting, which is still here before me, although in a very bad reproduction: "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" by Salvador Dali. I watched it for three hours in a row - I remember I was so staring at it... In the end I was thrown out because the museum was closing. But the rest seems empty to me, just a waste of time - I realize this is a hard statement, but that's the way I feel. I've seen many masterpieces by great artists and I've always wondered why they are considered so beautiful... I also literally hate Lynch's other movies considered his best. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather not be looking for interesting clues in art, but I prefer to find them just where I don't expect them to be.