honorable mention
Kamila J. Gruss polandPhoto © Kamila J. Gruss
title
CATCHING BREATH
The bubble as a hermetic zone, a thought bubble if looked at a glance, a sphere of personal space, but also of innate loneliness. At the same time like suffocation and the illusion of freedom.
The way her dress sways around her legs turns the picture into a fairy tale about Undine, flowing towards the surface to catch her breath. Her lifeless looking legs, touching the cold floor, shatter however this fantasy, smashing it to pieces. The same illusion of lightness that must lift one's spirits suddenly becomes too heavy and makes it impossible to resist the feeling that the drawn breath may be the last.
The picture is a narrative about the times in which we currently live; the times when freedom is just an illusion.
I was born and grew up in Poland. For ten years I studied and lived in Berlin, where I did my master degree in New German Literature, Spanish Literature and General And Comparative Literature Studies. At the same time I did my master degree in German studies in Szczecin, Poland.
back to gallery
entry description
Lots of feelings are layered: hidden but in plain sight.The bubble as a hermetic zone, a thought bubble if looked at a glance, a sphere of personal space, but also of innate loneliness. At the same time like suffocation and the illusion of freedom.
The way her dress sways around her legs turns the picture into a fairy tale about Undine, flowing towards the surface to catch her breath. Her lifeless looking legs, touching the cold floor, shatter however this fantasy, smashing it to pieces. The same illusion of lightness that must lift one's spirits suddenly becomes too heavy and makes it impossible to resist the feeling that the drawn breath may be the last.
The picture is a narrative about the times in which we currently live; the times when freedom is just an illusion.
about the photographer
Photography is my passion, obsession, a way to catch my breath. This is the part of me where I love to get lost. When it consumes me, I create my own versions of reality. Visions from my head, remembered by digital memory and postprocessed in Photoshop, become images. Raw files are like notes that only start to make up history after editing. Painting with darkness and light is a therapy and a kind of cleansing for me, getting rid of the deposits that have been in my head for a long time. The protagonists I create are full of extremes and like any human or non-human being, they can be beautiful or repugnant, joyful and suffering, yet simple and complex. Visual hallucinations often appear in my head and at the same time in photography, showing exactly what is hidden in the mind of the viewer. Childhood nightmares, phantasmagories and aeons of dreams that remain in the subconscious of each of us, adults or children, blend into the image like an enchanted marriage, creating a reflection of who I really am and maybe who are you.I was born and grew up in Poland. For ten years I studied and lived in Berlin, where I did my master degree in New German Literature, Spanish Literature and General And Comparative Literature Studies. At the same time I did my master degree in German studies in Szczecin, Poland.
back to gallery