Originally planning on a career as a painter, Warsaw artist Zbigniew Reszka (1964-) turned to photography in order to gain a more immediate emotional contact with his subjects. Reszka achieves this dark intimacy after working with his models through several meetings, picking up his camera only after the third or fourth session.
“Some models are not aware of the final effect of the session. They look at the pictures and find them terrifying. Others recognize themselves in ways which go far beyond the poses and the acts themselves, and into the abstract. Those keep coming back to me…”
“My photography is the result of a fascination with women’s bodies, bodies not necessarily beautiful in agreement with the common definition. The more imperfect the body the more fascinating it is for me. I incite my models to reveal dreams and obsessions they even don’t realize. After a session they suddenly begin to have a consciousness of their own power and independence. In my pictures they dominate themselves by their image.”
“I write down my models’ declarations and put them on the bottom of their pictures in masks. On one hand I create them after my manner, on the other – I’m showing who they really are. Sometimes I am scratching my comments directly on the plate.
Masks are my obsession as well. The anonymity they give is apparent. Sometimes you can learn more about someone with the mask on his face, because the mask provides the anonymity which allows him to show his true face.”
“I don’t want you to regard the nakedness of my models as a provocation. I think rather that the people indignant at my works didn’t take the trouble to look at them with attention, or they are not prepared for their perception. There is no pornography in my pictures. I am satisfied if I can find even one spectator at my exhibition who is able to understand my works. For such a person I’m working.”
Zbigniew Reszka is a member of Union Of Polish Art Photographers. He currently lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.