" 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 Andzrej Dragan while answer 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.
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 photographer always carry their cameras with them - I've heard that Cartier-Bresson before a breakfast had already used up a few roles - 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 not 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 keep my mind open and to find something interesting.
You've mentioned portraits. What do you think they are?
Portraits is an illusion of looking at a real person. People expect portraits to reveal something about the persons and their true 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. Science is a method to investigate which statements are not true. What comes out is that only very statements can be labeled 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 themselves. Ironically, 'break 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?
Source:
Interview taken from Advanced Images Mag
Photos by Andrzej Dragan
