19 October 2018 (Friday) 2 pm

Maciej Stobierski

“Breaths. Faces of the Saint John the Baptist Church in Siewierz”

vernissage of the photography exhibition

White Wall Gallery, 5th floor of the Fine Arts Academy, ul. Woj. Polskiego 121

Maciej Stobierski phot. author’s archive

Maciej Stobierski

Born in 1951 in Sosnowiec. In the past, participant of many expedition into various regions and mountain ranges of the world: climbing in the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas, the Andes, exploring in Amazonia. Still active nature lover, rambler. Member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Author of an individual collection of photography of landscape elements, nature, industrial motives.

In the years 2005-2011, he collaborated with the Maritime University in Gdynia, doing many month photographic sessions during sailing trips. Participant and organizer of photographic workshops. He has taught photography and image editing at the Faculty of Information Technology in Image and Sound Processing of the Katowice Institute of Information Technologies, as well as photography courses and workshops organized by the Association of Polish Art Photographers, and lectures for the students of the University of the Third Age at the University of Silesia in Katowice.

For the last couple of years — since the opening of Korzeniec — he has collaborated with the Zagłębie Theatre in Sosnowiec, documenting the company’s work on their productions. He has shown his photography in many individual and group exhibitions.

Selected albums and publications:
Albums: “Sailboat”, “160 Years of Zinc in Lipiny”, “Patoka Brickworks”
With other authors: “Wodna District — Katowice”, “Polish Landscape Masters”
He has published over 40 calendars.

phot. Maciej Stobierski

Breaths. Faces of the Saint John the Baptist Church in Siewierz

I had a plan. It assumed years of wandering outdoors and searching for materials in archives. A historical and photographic tale called “The Rivers of Zagłębie and the Borderland”. Rivers are a good visual guide, a link in time and space.

Meanwhile Grzegorz — a history lover — seeing my earlier activities and photographs, pointed to the old, somewhat forgotten Romanesque church, situated on a hill over the Czarna Przemsza in Siewierz.

“Our little church is nothing but simple stone walls, there’s nothing in it, maybe apart from ghosts from the cemetery” — announced the parish priest, handing us the keys. This was like an invitation, a beginning of a fascinating adventure. Everything that I try to discover, record, and show through my photography, has come together in this place. Many weeks of observation, of waiting for the right light, of conversations with historians, of browsing through archives and books, of exploring places with historical relations to the church, gave fruit in the form of the present series of photographs.

The mystery of light, the persistence of stone, the vanishing polychromes, the rough architecture, the landscape, the masses and the congregation. Searching for the context in the surroundings and in history, the junction of the past and the present. All of this is like a BREATH — divine energy, invigorating breeze. Captured in stone, held in the light, germinating in the landscape.
October 2017