The exhibition is a summary of the plein-air event that took place during the 47th Cho-Jazz 2017 International Jazz Workshops in Chodzież in August 2017.
Fifteen renowned and emerging artists working in the field of photography and visual media accepted the invitation to participate in the open-air workshop. Their works are presented at the exhibition: Wojciech Beszterda, Anna B. Gregorczyk, Tomasz Grzyb, Zofia Kawalec-Łuszczewska, Włodzimierz Kowaliński, Kasia Kalua Kryńska, Zdzisław Mackiewicz, Krzysztof Madera, Jowita Bogna Mormul, Paweł Opaliński, Kacper Spek, Piotr Spek, Jalanta Rycerska, Magdalena Wdowicz-Wierzbowska, Andrzej Zygmuntowicz.
Piotr Spek:
[…] Photography is often compared to a mirror that reflects and simultaneously records reality – but is it really reality? Doesn’t it merely record the authors’ perceptions through their filters, becoming an improvisation of reality resulting from time, place and emotional state? Doesn’t the mirror of photography, through the viewer’s filter, become yet another perception of reality, an improvisation resulting from time, place and emotion?
The challenge of creating a ‘mirror of reality’ for the 47th CHO-JAZZ 2017 International Jazz Workshops was proposed to 15 photographers during the JAZZ FREE PHOTO 2017 National Photography Workshop.
Jazz was everywhere, and so were we – it was a pleasure for us to create ‘mirrors of reality’ together. We would like to thank our fellow musicians, the workshop organisers and the partners supporting the plein-air event – we hope that our mirrors of reality will be a good introduction to improvisation on the subject…
Andrzej Zygmuntowicz:
[…] Stay a while! What about the photos? Maybe tomorrow? Right now, I am immersing myself in sounds that purify me from worldliness. I am floating away on a flying carpet into Leśmian’s fairy-tale world. It was worth coming here. Will the photos tell the story of what happened here?
Will they show the emotions, excitement, joy and elation?
Inspired by their surroundings, people with cameras delved into the space of jazz as much as possible. The energy born in the space of music infected everyone, including the photographers. And through them, it entered the recorded images. Can this beautiful state of mind be recreated in an exhibition? I am strangely calm that it can. Jazz is a positive virus, so why shouldn’t those infected by it succumb to its influence?
Janusz Szrom (Artistic Director of Cho-Jazz):
Sound – click!
An acoustic, emotional creative process. Fleeting by nature – captured. Forever.
Emotion – click!
Creative elation. ‘Dynamic change’ – frozen in a frame. Forever.
Talent – click!
The birth of an artist. The magic of the event and the place – a record of the moment. Forever.
The Jazz Workshops in Chodzież have become a cult event for the community and people associated with Polish jazz. The only one of its kind in the world, with a nearly fifty-year tradition based on master-student relationships, it has resulted in the creation of an institution of exceptional importance for the development of jazz art in Poland and abroad.
I would like to thank my fellow artists from ‘szkiełko i oko’ for this moving photo report, a testimony to our long-standing teaching tradition.
