Inspired by unpredictable is because something unexpected happened and pushed me to make this project. My own life showed me in recent years how unexpected events and coincidences turned out to be like windows opened to new opportunities.
This project is a fruit of accident which occurred on a rainy day. Some glass panes I was transporting suddenly broke. I was immediately amazed by the complexity of lines which were created and despite the apparent chaos I saw some kind of order, balance and unity. Reflections of glass and water added to this impression and made me think about my own curiosity inspired by the unpredictable event. The kind of images of this project shaped in the accident remind me of the limits of our human comprehension and also how limited control of events we have.
Important to me was to preserve on each of the photographs a natural recognizable element which was in my case a drop of rainy water. The abstract images I saw in front of me and took the photos of were meaningful but only as far as this tint of reality was preserved.
Adding color and allowing some degree of manipulation of the photograph is a part of the creation. My objective is not to limit the visual impression to pure abstraction but to keep the relative balance between real and unreal, to remain in the unstable and ambivalent space of uncertainty. As Ralph Gibson said: “A perfect photograph would express neither life nor art, rather define an in-between”.
This project is also expressing my purely photographic approach and in any case an attempt to imitate the art of painting. Photography is a medium which gives me opportunity to create new and unknown effects and ultimately trigger emotions and should not try to reproduce strokes of brush.
Yes, this accident of broken glass panes was happy and should be for me a reminder not to shun unexpected but rather feel inspiration.
About Paul Hulewicz
I was born in Poland and in my twenties moved to Western Europe. I lived in different countries and worked in a corporate world. I started my serious involvement in photography in the nineties as a self-taught photographer. Street photography became my first focus of interest. Several workshops with well-known photographers helped me to find my language. A direct inspiration of a great American photographer Alex Webb made a big impact. Light and shadow, color and ambiguity of street theater fascinated me for many years.
My new home in Switzerland starting from 2006 marked my expansion from street photography to landscape and nature. I quickly discovered that nature has become an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Nature triggered imagination and new ideas of abstract interpretation came to life. I started exploring ways to represent distorted reality using different techniques like image transfer, multiple exposure, camera movement etc. Some of these techniques used in my recent series make a link between mysterious imperfections in nature and man-made objects. As an echo to natural forces some abstract images refer to unpredictable, short-lived and fleeting. My challenge and objective is the search for new visual directions accessing the subconscious. My beacons in this endeavor are surprise and ambiguity which are so very present around me in nature. [Official Website]