Marta Lesniakowska, LOOK #16 g. 14:04:37, 2018 - 2023

collectible digital photography/archival paper Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315g
40 x 40 cm

Edition: /5
Color collectible photography
Digital print Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315g (semi-gloss) paper, archival paper, acid-free
signed on the front and back

date. 2018/ life time print 2023

Format 40x40 cm in light image, with frame 50x50 cm

Piece numbered from a limited edition of 5 pieces.

The last warm October day, a few months before the pandemic, which nothing yet announces. The title "Waiting" is ambiguous. The seemingly calm atmosphere of a sunny afternoon with the interior of a bar viewed from the street through the glass with a lone figure waiting for something/someone, is marked by a sense of alienation and tension. I consciously used here a stark, bright color scheme as if from the technicolor era known from Hollywood cinema, to evoke the unreality of the scene, its surreal atmosphere, at the same time anchored in the aesthetics of film noire. This produces a network of meanings and non-obviousness, a reality multiplied in dreamlike images of the city reflected in the glass. The frame organized in this way determines the psychophysiology of its reception, evoking undercurrents of emotion and tension. As in Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960), whose dark atmosphere shines through from under my photo neo-noire. Here I redefine the aesthetics of film noire to ask how and why they resonate in the metamodern photography I practice today. (ml)