Description
Gritty darkroom prints on obsolete East Bloc paper give a peculiar, otherworldy atmosphere to this photobook portraying the Polish city of Poznań. Artisanal bookbinder Pagina1 was responsible for the special format of this publication, with an alternatively positioned spine, and more fold-out pages than an illustrated book for children.
Photographer Ruben van Luijk lived in Poznań for two years and couldn’t help taking pictures with his trusted Agfa Clack. He only started to capture the mood of the city, though, when he discovered a darkroom underneath an experimental theatre and started to print his negatives on 30-40 year old, obsolete ‘Dokument Paper’. Printing on this material, resulted in gritty, highly atmospheric images with a strange time-warp effect. A city that in fast pace has come to resemble its Western-European counterparts suddenly seems to be plunged back into the communist era. Apart from forgotten relics of the recent past and spontaneous street scenes, van Luijk also photographed eminently contemporary subjects, such as people eating at McDonalds or an electric scooter left in the snow. The result is a collection of pictures eerily disjointed from history, a strange parallel universe, rooted on the one hand in the Poznań of reality, but on the other hand only existing in photography.
Notatki poznańskie/Poznań notes was realized with financial support by the Jaap Harten Fonds en the city of Poznań. 55 numbered copies of this extraordinary publication will be released, of which only a limited number will be available for purchase.
fantastic work… dreamy (almost surreal) in nature...
Analog Café
