MAREK NONIEWICZ

Bydgoszcz ART/DOC Award Competition juror

A visual artist who lives in Bydgoszcz and promotes 19th century photographic techniques. In his own work, he deals mainly with photography but he also uses installation, urban space activities or performance. About his own work, he says: “Photography is my main activity, but more and more often I think I am interested in photosensitivity. I am convinced that the way an image is saved reflects the way of thinking about it and its perception. Therefore, I reach for historic, experimental techniques or ephemeral forms of saving; I treat them as a kind of key to the language of the nature. Irreversibility and constant transformations of silver processes in a way correspond to the changeability of the natural world. What I try to record is the course of these changes.”

He worked on numerous educational projects. The key ones among them are: „Świat” (“The World”) – photography workshops for children from post-state farm environments organised in cooperation with the Association for the Development of the Krzywa and Jasionka Villages and the CZARNE publishing house (2002), „Lato w teatrze” (“Summer in the Theatre”) – photography and stage design workshops as a part of a project by the Z. Raszewski Theatre Institute (Gostycyn 2014, Borne Sulinowo 2015, 2018), “Look In the Darkness” – integration theatre and photography workshops as a part of the Very Young Culture programme (Bydgoszcz 2016), “Świat poza czasem” (“Out of Time World”) (Completed as a part of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage scholarship 2019)

In the cultural education projects, he uses the potential of photography as a creative tool for building the participants’ self-esteem. By reaching for historical techniques and alternative uses of photosensitive materials, he tries to develop the participants’ sensitivity to the world around them by equipping them in the ability to use the visual alphabet in building their own narratives.