Series description:
The body is a form created by the soul to express itself. These words aptly explain the idea of the project. „Who am I?” is a psychological portraits series. Visualization of outward and inner world and a glance to their correlation. A look at how people understand themselves and how that reflected in their facial features. I am very grateful to the participants for their courage to reveal their personal worlds, each interesting and different. This project was a challenge and discovery for them as well as for me. The participants discovered the new things about themselves, took a challenge to accept them and speak out loud. For me it was an opportunity to see not seen side of the people well known for me and to know less familiar people.
Each image creation started with conversation during which I asked the participants to ask themselves the only question - “Who am I?” and gave them as much time as they needed for the answer to come up. Three stage method was used to purify only one answer, the most important at least at the present moment. In fact, to find out the answer took longer than the shooting itself. However, this was not usual photographing either.
The large format pinhole camera chosen for shooting cause this type cameras requires long time for exposure as well as a time needed to honestly answer who am I. I asked the models not to pose but to think about themselves during shooting. Each image exposure time different, but the models had to stay still from 5 seconds to 1 minute.
Pinhole camera also chosen for the reason to achieve a mystical, secret effect. Double exposure helped to reveal how each person identifies himself. Everything was important: place, symbols, even the time of the year. The images named by participants answers without any further explanation just to keep participants privacy and to leave place for viewer’s imagination. Maybe the viewer will find something resonating and ask himself who am I?