The Marian Stroński Competition has concluded. The top prize went to Grażyna Niezgoda for her photographic series "Palimpsest."

A conversation with the winner about her photographic work.

When did you discover photography?

Once, by the San River, I took a photo of my dog, San, and Przemyśl with a very simple camera, and I saw the immense pleasure, the joy of composition. Then I got good cameras, so I could have a tool, so I could create something that brings joy. From the beginning, I've used photography as a medium for artistic exploration. Just as the form of plastic theater existed for Kantor, Szajna, and Mądzik, so, while maintaining the proportions of these great names, I use the camera to find painterly, graphic, and even spatial solutions.

That was the beginning, and then…?

I've never entered photography competitions, nor did I aspire to be a renowned photographer. I've always been interested in the language of art. This language, which I've been building for years, serves me to tell stories about the passage of time, about transience. I've worked on projects like "Słonne, Słonne," "Upływ czas w Przemyślu miasto," "Does the Mirror Remember Us," and now I'm working on the project "Palimpsest." All of this concerns the transience of meaning, memory, forgetting, and the passing of time. I once worked on a series called "Peasant Installations," searching for and photographing objects in the rural landscape that were already finished works of art. In my abstract series, I seek solutions to problems of composition, color, harmony or disharmony, and rhythms. When I photograph, I utilize existing, ready-made situations. From the vastness of the world, from infinity, I select a fragment that interests me, carefully frame it, and only then release the shutter. I try to avoid post-production.

You lived in the art world and added photography to it?

I deal with art, it is my job, so just like Mądzik and others, I wanted to use photography to talk about visual art and visual issues, and I found a language that gave me the opportunity to talk about visual activities.

Is this what matters most to you?

Yes. Image, color, composition. It's evident in my photographs, the purely abstract ones. I'm looking for something like that. Compositions like the ones I entered in the competition. I photographed fragments of billboards. They have letters and numbers that are merely visual symbols; there's space, surfaces filled with color that form dynamic compositions. Layers that testify to the passage of time. All of these are artistic actions achieved with the camera, the language of photography, which is so rich that it allows for a complete narrative. For example, by taking a portrait, we're telling the story of a person.

Is transience important in your photography?

Photography, by its very nature, is transient, because the moment we take a picture, the fragment of the world we chose to photograph has already passed away. I have emphasized many times that subjectivity in photography is captured through the lens. Therefore, the truth of the photographer is not always the truth of the outside world.

What do you think about contemporary photography?

I really like it. Social photography. Sometimes ugly, not perfectly framed. I like this modern language, so often used by painters and graphic designers. In fact, today it's the main art medium used by contemporary artists.

How can we find the most valuable works of art in this chaos of millions of photos?

The ease of photography and the deluge of images is exhausting. It doesn't scare me, just as it didn't scare me that everyone had pens and fountain pens, yet there were so few poets and writers. Let everyone do their own thing, and either their work will be noticed or it will be lost forever.

Congratulations on the award and thank you for the interesting conversation.

Jacek Szwic

Grażyna Niezgoda – winner of the competition.

Grażyna Niezgoda - photographer (ZPAF), author of texts on art, antiquarian and gallerist, organizer and propagator of art. Expert appraiser in the field of art value. Author of over 25 solo exhibitions, participates in interdisciplinary exhibitions and photography, plein-air events, shows, and artistic meetings. Her photograms have been published in: "Masters of Polish Landscape"; "The Art of Photography"; "Photographers. Biographical Dictionary of Polish Photographers"; "The Art of Subcarpathia", Vol. 3; "25 x razy Słonne" and many art periodicals, literary volumes, and art catalogs. Author of the exhibition "Faces Between the Lines, Books Illustrated by Grażyna Niezgoda's Photographers" and, together with Kazimierz Wiśniak, the album "The Birth of an Image." Her texts have been published in, among others, "The Art of Subcarpathia"; the album "25 x Słonne"; "The Time Machine"; "The Center of the Worlds Is Here"; as well as in art publications and catalogs. She has received numerous awards for her work and creativity, including the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture – in the field of visual arts (2022).