NEW YORK, NY.- Jurek Wajdowicz's images focus on issues of space, light, tone and unpredictability. We experience a poem, a piece of music, a vision defined not only by what he reveals, but by what we see in it.
In his new, deeply personal book of photography, 67/11, the internationally acclaimed designer and fine art photographer explores the universal experience of the loss of a parent and the meaning of home following the death of his beloved mother. His beautiful, dreamlike photographs taken over several days and nights in his mother's home in Lodz, Poland as Wajdowicz arranged and waited for her funeral, float somewhere between photography and painting.
Wajdowicz writes, "There was no plan. I just began to work, dealing with the undercurrent of nostalgia and the ambiguous afterimages of fact and fiction - while hoping to defer the end forever. I was avoiding the decisions as an only child must
make, avoiding the final good-bye - to her and to the home of my childhood."
Wajdowicz lingers on his mother's possessions - a sewing machine, books, the foot pedals of a piano, picture frames, a watch, suitcases on a shelf, and her son's paint brushes from art school that she had kept for 35+ years. Among the book's most exquisite images is of four slightly wizened apples on a windowsill bathed in golden light, and the second to last image in the book, a framed portrait of the photographer's mother on a mantelpiece that looks curiously alive. Did the photographer take it on one of his last trips home to visit his mother? This image is preceded by what appears to be a shadowy portrait of the photographer/son himself in front of a curtained window.
"We all fear loss of memory. What if my loss is more ominous and final? This is my attempt to hold on to those half-remembered, half-imagined images, to hold on to a memory of dom - home - and to the woman who just left me without parents."
67/11 is a response to a deep sense of personal loss and the painful void it has left behind. It is an emotionally charged work that is at once starkly simple and richly layered, and an expression of sadness and poetry.
Renowned author, educator and critic Fred Ritchin has written about the photographer's work: "As Wajdowicz's work evolves, the expression of how we might see differently, how we might more directly access the emotional, intangible nature of place and object, also evolves. As he looks to give expression to interior, deeply personal landscapes as well as the outward and unexpected, an ongoing dialog between audience and emotion unfolds. We are given the opportunity to be lifted from our existence in the everyday into the world of the hopeful and sublime."
Wajdowicz began his career as a graphic artist in Lodz, Poland, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in Graphic Design and Photography at the Lodz Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in New York City. His EWS Design studio (in partnership with Lisa LaRochelle) works with international humanitarian organizations and leading non-profit institutions around the world. In the 50th Anniversary Survey of the Graphic Design: USA magazine, Wajdowicz was selected among the "Most Influential Graphic Designers of the Past 50 Years". Wajdowicz published two previous photography books: Liminal Spaces. Fotografie 75 (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013) and Pride & Joy. Taking the Streets of New York City (The New Press, 2016).
Jurek Wajdowicz's work is included in the collections of the United States Library of Congress, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (USA), the United Nations (Geneva and New York), the Poster Museum in Wilanów (Poland), Arcus Foundation (New York), the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Switzerland), American Institute of Graphic Arts (New York), Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (Poland), the Rockefeller Foundation (New York), RMH Foundation (California) and the Hamburgʼs Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Germany), as well as in private collections in the USA, Austria, Germany and Poland.