Zdzisław Beksiński
Personal Background: Born in 1929 in Sanok, Poland, Zdzisław Beksiński. Sanok was a polish town with a massive Jewish population, 30% by some counts. When World War 2 kicked off, Zdzisław Beksiński would see the Germans occupy the liquidate and kill almost all of the Jewish population in the Zasław concentration camp. Zdzisław Beksiński would then watch his country be occupied by the USSR and a puppet government be put in it's place. These events would shape much of his photography and art. He would study architecture in Cracow. Then went onto a job as a construction manager a job where he would start his photography period taking photos of materials on the job. In 1959, he would be part of an exhibition in Gliwice which became known as “The Anti-Photography”, where one of his most famous works, "The Sadist's Corset" would be shown. He was part of several formal and informal photography groups, including Association of Polish Artists and Designers and the Polish Art Photographers from 1957-1963. In 1960, he believed he had done everything he could with photography and went onto surreal painting, which is his more famous work. He would die in 2005 after a teenager he knew stabbed him over not loaning money.
Style: Zdzisław Beksiński photography is intentional spit in the face of Straight Photography that was popular during the time. Rather than show the subject in focus and detail, Beksiński's work is muddled and distracted. Human faces are obscured, distorted, and hidden by shadows, mirrors, frames, body parts, and even rips in the photos themselves. Objects are shown in darkness and blinding light. These distortions give his work a similar feel as Joel-Peter Witkin's work, where the human body and person is look through a different lens. While Witkin's work was photographing the people on the edges of society straight on, with nothing hidden, Beksiński's work distorts normal looking people, hiding parts of them until they almost reach the uncanny valley. While both come from similar influences of french surrealism, Beksiński himself ridiculed Avant Garde, believing that all modern art styles from across the world would come to an end, and that a new form of art fusing different and even contradicting art styles would emerge as the "New Classics"
Philosophy: The greatest explanation of Beksiński's Philosophy is with quotes he gave about his paintings. "It misses the point to ask me what scenes in my paintings 'mean'. Simply, I do not know, myself. Moreover, I am not at all interested in knowing." and “Meaning is meaningless to me. I do not care for symbolism and I paint what I paint without meditating on a story.” We Can extrapolate that Beksiński did not care about meaning or telling an overarching story about any of his work, but rather did it to possibly soothe some inn er demon in himself. But there is enough common themes in his photography that I can at least give my impression of meaning. The distortions of human bodies, the rejection of art principles, and the intense surreal feeling in his photos gives me the feeling that much like many artist post WW2, Beksiński was attempting to deconstruct meaning, themes, and even the idea of humanity and what is human to deal with the intense atrocities that he saw in his youth. By distorting humans, Beksiński distorts the human soul, until we as the viewer looks at them not as human, but some human like beast. The parallels to how fascist movements view scapegoats, the untermensch, is clear.
Influences: Beksiński himself was inspired by French Surrealism, but would later reject it. Now onto how it has influenced me. But despite discovering his work only very recently, Beksiński's work has influenced me incredibly. It has opened up my eyes to surrealist photography, that photography doesn't even need to make the subject look human but still produce a feeling in the viewer. I will certainly be using the ideas in his work for some of my later works
Resources:
Megargee, Geoffrey (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p. Volume II 569–571. ISBN 978-0-253-35599-7.
Zdzisław Beksiński. (n.d.). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://culture.pl/en/artist/zdzislaw-beksinski
Photography. (n.d.). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from http://muzeum.sanok.pl/en/zbiory/zdzislaw-beksinski/fotografia
Zdzislaw Beksinski's photography: A preferential entry to fantastic realism. (2020, May 04). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://www.xibtmagazine.com/en/2018/05/zdzislaw-beksinski-photography/
Dessel, T. (2017, November 04). How Zdzisław Beksiński shows us more than mere reality. Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://medium.com/%40exploringdarkwoods/how-zdzis%C5%82aw-beksi%C5%84ski-shows-us-more-than-mere-reality-379ef596a560
Megargee, Geoffrey (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p. Volume II 569–571. ISBN 978-0-253-35599-7.
Zdzisław Beksiński. (n.d.). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://culture.pl/en/artist/zdzislaw-beksinski
Photography. (n.d.). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from http://muzeum.sanok.pl/en/zbiory/zdzislaw-beksinski/fotografia
Zdzislaw Beksinski's photography: A preferential entry to fantastic realism. (2020, May 04). Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://www.xibtmagazine.com/en/2018/05/zdzislaw-beksinski-photography/
Dessel, T. (2017, November 04). How Zdzisław Beksiński shows us more than mere reality. Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://medium.com/%40exploringdarkwoods/how-zdzis%C5%82aw-beksi%C5%84ski-shows-us-more-than-mere-reality-379ef596a560
Wife portraitUntitledUntitled |
.This was an interesting thing to do. I had to take a photo of myself, then my dad, which was a hassle in itself. Then I had to edit out all the backgrounds to both of those images, along with a photo cut I found on the internet. I then had to combine them all together and add a white background. The result was this, which is probably the best looking one
This was one of the first photos I took. It was also one of the easiest to edit. Despite this, I am not happy with the final result. I couldn't find a non clutter background to take the photo in with the proper lighting, so I had to edit out the background a place a solid one. This makes the photo less dynamic and makes me feel less confident in it.
I had trouble editing this. There was issues with the face and the hands along with the background. I had to edit out the background of each hand with the lasso tool, giving me a less than clean cut from the background. This lead to me be unable to use several hand positions, leaving me with only a couple to use. Other than that, the process of creating this was fun
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