A visual diary by Marta Kaczmarek

#AnInterview! Marta Kaczmarek is special. Her photographs are a blend of poetry and painting. She describes herself as an art lover, a wanderer with camera. She is currently living in Gdańsk and is dancing in the moonlight. Enjoy her visual diary and an entrance to the world through her eyes.

KALTBLUT: You come from Poland and live in Portugal. How do you feel these 2 different cultures are present in your work?

Marta: Portugal turned out to be reflection of my inner state – firstly variety of colors which are rather warm, but usually they are also a major factor of building the special ambience of anxiety. Secondly, I find melancholic attitude fascinating and profound at the very same time – saudade is the key word! A proper right to feel sadness and gratitude with no disturbing dissonance as the background. Poland is different, it is way more rough just like its light, nevertheless it has strong influence on perceiving nonobvious beauty. Mixing industrial spaces with elements of fashion editorials gives an opportunity of searching for new aesthetics.

KALTBLUT: Bridges between art forms are important to you. Which art forms are of interest to you and why?

Marta: When it comes to bridges it seems hard to depict one special area. Studying Intermedia demands on me constant search within all of art branches. Recently I got hooked on installations and scenography though bridges in my photography appear mostly in combination both analogue and digital kinds of photography. For long years I was focused more on painting and graphic design so probably there is also a surface of traditional art means.

KALTBLUT: Within the field of photography, what interests you most? Do you prefer shooting fashion or documentary or what?

Marta: For years I have been mostly concerned with fashion photography and storytelling. Some things has changed at the point of starting studying, then the chapter of living in Portugal occurred and as I mentioned before I got totally involved by this culture. Fashion photography wasn’t enough with such vibrant background like the portuguese one. It was the time of trying to find oneself – trying a bit of documentary photography and conceptual at some time, just to experiment with mixed media on the very next morning. Total freedom.

KALTBLUT: Where and how do you get inspiration from?

Marta: From stories! Especially within the kind of micro histories. I’m constantly doing some research work on topography and human thinking processes and as the result usually I get new sources of inspiration. In the first instance, the ‘Space is the place’ project was based on essence of Porto city. In unaffected way I started to take lots of pictures of abandoned spaces and I was way more focused on details of cityscape and somehow at some time I unconsciously started to shoot shadows during fashion photoshoots. In the end of my stay there I made an overview of work made within this period of time and it was obvious that it is a total work and a result of thought which was extremely vivid for those months.

KALTBLUT: What would be your ultimate dream project?

Marta: When it comes to dream projects I’d rather go for mixed medias techniques and experiments. It would be truly rewarding to create whole artistic space where photography is only a foothold. Probably my dream project would raise some major questions about human inner life and would be long distanced so as to put it to an end in the form of photo book.

Follow

www.instagram.com/martakaczmarek

www.mar-sophie.tumblr.com