Galeria FF - Michał Węgrzyn.

      Time. Before I can name it, it is gone. However, it is always present, although it dies each second. A timeless chronology. A mythical serpent still eating its tail.
       Tempus edax rerum - through the ages the notion of time has been accompanied by this malicious phrase that reminds us of the greediness with which it devours everything that surrounds us. Praeter nos omnia perdit - and the hope that time will take away only this part of me that I have accidentally left behind within the objects that perished under its blows.
       The feeling of loss is inseparably connected with the notion of time. Time passes and we are powerless; we pass and are passed at the same time.
       This feeling of loss also constitutes photography. I look at photographs and I know that whatever I am looking at has already happened; that it has been washed away by the merciless wave of the lost. What is left is the awareness that this loss is the necessary condition under which photographs may be taken.
       Whenever a photograph is taken we feel that we may reach beyond time. Indeed, cannot the simultaneous visualization of what once was and what is now - as in photography - be considered a triumph in that timeless struggle, even if it is only a partial victory? And yet again - a painful defeat: what we managed to preserve is but a view of a thing, its mere reflection. The picture was frozen and time did not even notice my efforts. Passing me by it slightly stroked my cheek once again. The registration of a lost moment only speeds up the movement of the hands of the clock. And we thought that we could change passage into duration.
       There is always some A and some Z and there is always a road leading from A to Z. Long ago man measured his time according to the changing seasons and the cycles of the rebirth of Nature. Today hundredths of a second are readily measured by more and more precise instruments. Is it possible that defining time in terms of another farther decimal point which intensifies our awa-reness will let me reduce time to that minimal constant between two points?
       Since I cannot even experience time authentically, is it possible to arrive at its physical image? Such an assumption seems to be an illusion. However - photography has proved a number of times that it can overtake the senses and reveal more than we can or wish to see with a naked eye. Could it be that this time it will also let me see the invisible?

      Dorota Walentynowicz