This Is Not America

Getting accustomed to the space of the mythical California: the California of maturing oranges, hummingbirds in various shades and Miłosz teaching Slavic literature at UC Berkeley. They are not very typical postcards though, as instead of the dream hub of the universe, what appears in them is what is just out of the frame: fascinating backwoods, its quirkiness with its own logic, the city as a cabinet of curiosities. Details and rifts in the orderly world, ephemeral phenomena and scraps of absurd processes instead of the obviousness of the 'rightest' shots. As the artist says himself, the photographs are 'an attempt to take a look at the distant and exotic places as if they were familiar. Only after 6 months of looking, familiarizing myself and getting used to the space, did I manage to write a diary from the new home with a simple compact camera.' The distance between Lodz and Berkeley is exactly 6,000 miles. The road became as vital an element as the photographs themselves, as it brings one closer and takes one away from something at the same time. The light of California in the photographs is slightly misty, the colours of the images brought back from over the ocean emerge from the whiteness, but maybe they retreat back into it again.     Marta Skłodowska