NOW IS NOW

We encounter situations when we experience the given moment more profoundly, in the given place. The time slows down and our perception of ordinary things changes. The mind is no longer occupied with racing thoughts, which allows us to focus more on our surroundings. It’s good to experience this state. It allows us to break with routine and notice other dimensions of our reality.

Personally, I experience such moments when I spend my day taking photos. I absorb the given time and I wish to immortalize every moment, which I do through photography. The presented photos show the images that drew my attention. They were created subconsciously and intuitively. I am convinced that as a result of another sense of time.

Now is now, never before and never after, but now.

The particular photos are taken out of context, out of a larger whole, but focusing on an area of interest is one of the features of photography. Through chosing the given take and focusing on its key elements, I try to convey my impressions and emotions related to a different perception of the images placed in front of my lens „now“ back then, i.e. in the past from today’s perspective.

The inspiration for the title of the exhibition comes from the film Palermo Shooting directed by Wim Wenders, which shows a successful professional photographer who starts to experience time and space in from a completely different perspective.

                                                                                                            Iza Maciusowicz

Surface tension in photography
Around Iza Maciusowicz’s photos

Photography - registering the light reflected by objects – as a matter of fact – immortalizes only their surfaces. We must deduce the rest by ourselves. Looking at a portrait of a face we wish to see its shiny eyes as a gate to its soul whereas looking at the scratches on the wall we try to discover its long history, covered by new coats of paint. The compelling need to reach the depth hidden under the thin surface of the photo emulsion (or pigment) arouses a certain tension in us. This is the surface tension in photography.
The wanderer from the engraving of Camille Flammarion reveals a bit of the firmament to peek into the mechanism of the outer space surrounding us. This thin boundary separating so much seems to be as short-lasting as a soap bubble and yet, so closely adhering to the materiality like milk skin1. Similarly, the surfaces we can see on Iza Maciusowicz’s minimalist photos seem ephemeral and yet difficult to penetrate. The light slides on the rough planes, emphasizing their corporality: roughness or smoothness, hardness or softness, which always limits us to what’s behind/under them.
Most of them suggest a kind of depth, which they hide and to which the author seems to be showing us a narrow crevice, a pass or a ray of light without ever fully lifting the Flammarion’s curtain. The surface tension in photography achieved in this way creates a kind of meniscus, which we can push, yet we’ll never permeate it. Like water striders – small insects, which smoothly slide across the level of water without diving in it.
These photos feature one more thin membrane: the title now separating the past from the future. We can look at the incredibly thin, measured in hundredths of second, surface of a two-way mirror and notice the layers of our experience and memories and the visions of our future plans, fears and hopes. As the author says, the presented photos were captured in the moments when she experienced a specific sense of different time. Maybe this is the short moment, this twinkling glimmer when both images become inseparable and the only thing that is certain is that now is now.

                                                                                                                                                   Wojciech Sternak

Izabela Maciusowicz - graduate of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Studied photography at the Warsaw Film School. Completed a PhD course at the Faculty of Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where, in May 2015, she obtained the degree of PhD in arts.
At present, she conducts classes on the basics of photography and acts as the Deputy Dean for didactic and scientific affairs at the Faculty of Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
A member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers.
Her awarded and honored photos were published in the British magazine Black+White Photography and twice in the American magazine Color.
Izabela collects photo albums and explores her surroundings with a photo camera at hand.