Robinson Crusoe's Diary
Pawel Bownik
14.08. - 03.09.2006
Fotogalleriet, Visby, Sweden
"I have never supposed that there is so much heaven here." *
According to the artist, pictures taken by astronauts participating in space expedition in 1960s and 70s, constituated inspiration for that series of photographs. However, not these commonly known, which went round the world shorty after the first landing on the Moon and now they are published in encyclopedias. But this photographs originally rejected, accidental, as it seems at first, telling nothing interesting about this newly discovered space, which could not be used for propaganda in those days influenced creation of Robinson Crusoe's Diary. This "wastes", for the first time, could be seen after 30 years. Michael Light discovered them in NASA archives and published as an album Full Moon. While watching them a viewer can realize how amazing experience for humanity was this "small step". Photographs in the book reveal personal attitude of each astronaut towards flight in the outer space, walking on a difference planet, watching Earth from a huge distance and all other feeling and impressions for which no one could prepare them before flight. The fact that originally there were no windows planned in space shuttles seems very surprising now. The flight itself, technology efficiency of equipement were more important, and touching the Moon appeared as reaching the highest peak, another achievement of human kind proving triumph. Photographs in the book Full Moon provide a different point of view at those flights and this personal, subjective attitude of a human being is very precious as it shows that journey from another perspective. Pawel Bownik had similar intensions when he created Robinson's Crusoe Diary. It is an attempt to look at the city space in a way that one has an impression of being on a separate planet.
"There are many separated cities in each city." *
A city is a collection of objects. During the day all these things typical for the city space - traffic lights, bus stops, dustbins and a huge number of other elements - contitute overwhelming chaos of excess, causing an impresion of overloading and decreasing the ability of experiencing space. Night changes their character. In presented photographs the elements of cityscape gain new meaning, are less dominating and do not distract viewers' attention as they harmonously fit in space. Simple symbols depicted in the pictures - a shadow, postcard with sunset in a plastic bag, street lamps resembling contelation - just like in the case of picture taken by astronauts, became the proof of presence, and in this way satisfied a strong need of marking our own space. Aglanceat night cityscape, so different from the day one, reminds of the astronishment and absorbing earlier unknown impressions of the newly dicovered place, which were shared by "conquerors" of the Moon.
Robinson's Crusoe Diary is a series which had a particular goal - search for such an image which would depict the mood the feelings of a person looking at the surroundng space from the perspective of being on a planet. Thus, these photographs have become a kind of non objective, personal document. A proof of the evoked impressions.* D.Mitchell Ghostwritten
Fotografia nr 18, 2005 [ PL ] Wilson Buellow
