I know that judging art is a bad thing, because only the creator can judge his work well. That’s why I don’t send my works to photo contests, fully aware of how many outstanding painters were appreciated only after death.
But still, it’s nice when even the more difficult works appeal to someone, especially when it’s a Vogue Italia photo editor.
Here another recognition of my work, for which I sincerely thank you.
My entire visual story of fallen innocence highlighted by Iconic Artist Magazine Italia. Thank you beautifully, and I present to you this entire story, which consists of three, very significant, images
It’s immensely gratifying to see your work in the Italian media dedicated to photography, especially those that present the highest level of artistic vision. Iconic has already honored me with another highlight of my work, this time it was a magical female nude session with the beautiful and girlish Karina.
As usual, my pictures are created as much during shooting as during processing. My colors, colors that are the result of thinking about the image, experience, story. I never in my life do something like some photographers do, that they take a color wheel and adjust according to a scheme to get a catchy effect on the viewer. What are the opposing colors, what color is in the triad, which one matches the other so as to get the so-called “wow effect.” It makes me laugh, using the color wheel for a painting job is moronic, just like using the grammatical dictionary of a language to write poetry. The color wheel and relationship between colors should be known, but boasting about its use to achieve “wow” is, in my opinion, an open admission of the blindness of the soul and the mechanical perception of the image, that is, acting like an artificial intelligence – which has rules programmed into it and processes the world according to that. This is tons of light years away from the quest, fulfilled through history by poets, painters of all kinds, who go away always too soon, carrying their souls on their shoulders, which no artificial intelligence will ever counterfeit. Well, unless one wants to do the same thing as robots, as Tomasz Pluszczyk recently described in analyzing the progress of artificial intelligence in rendering images. Well, if someone wants to use cheap tricks to create at most correct images, why not, I am not one of such people 🙂
I invite you, stay with me and my model, Karina, in this beautiful moment of contemplation of the girlish body and human destiny 🙂
And referring to our conversations during the session, when Karina talked about Odessa and its musical traditions, that’s how nostalgic I associate this song with these images – and although not from Odessa, the melody and melancholy fit me for these photos:
Dear friends, I have been away for a long time. And yet we read in Pliny: Nulla dies sine linea 🙂 Much pondering behind me, many painting studies and aesthetic books. Not much has changed, because the most important thing is a masterful form that conveys the content one wishes to express with depth of spirit. I know that today the common idea is that we are just algorithms, programmed by a chemistry that is attempted to be recreated by ‘professional fate machers’, as Lady Punk sang, along with her corpulence. I am deeply opposed to such a vision of people, although observations of human behaviour often do not fill me with optimism, I still believe that human beings are more than just chemical-psychological algorithms.
Read moreAs I mentioned with the Lilies, girlhood and portraits (nudes) of women are my biggest inspirations and a way to express my emotions and thoughts. But not only – I am inspired by every area of art and photography. A photographer in cities such as Krakow or Warsaw has a lot of photographically attractive objects at his disposal. But isn’t it the case that it is the undiscovered places that are the best way to exercise the eye, the heart, the composition and the language of visual communication?
The editors of Vogue Italia this time decided to highlight my photo of Silesian landscape and architecture. Of course, they are not some kind of determinant of either what should or should not be allowed in art, they simply highlight photos that conform to a certain aesthetic line of the editors, but every time such a distinction is something nice. On my account in Vogue where I insert photos that do not include people, these works appeared:
Traditionally, I would like to thank the editors of Vogue for the award and you for seeing my works and hosting me on the site 🙂 I invite you to sessions in different cities – as a photographer – Cracow, Kielce, Warsaw, Katowice 🙂
My keynote, which guided me from the idea to the realization of this short series of photographs, was a passage from the work of William Butler Yeats:
The innocent and the beautiful
HAve no enemy, but time
And an excerpt from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser:
The breasts like lilies til other leaves be shared
Her nipples like young blossomed jessamine
such fragrant flowers to give most odour’s smell
but her sweet odour did them all excel
Innocence and its loss, and consequently considerations of truth, have had a very long list of representations in iconology and painting – I will not describe here everything I was familiar with before creating these photographs with the Model.
I will only add that I wanted with this series to ask what is innocence? How does it connect with youth and carnality? Does it also connect with the spiritual element of man? Does this spiritual element even exist? How does it pass away? What is the loss of innocence? Can innocence be longed for? Finally – Lily’s Innocence – I wanted to play with words a bit. Whose innocence? The bud of the lily flower, or the girl named Lilia? Lilianna?
As it is usually me and my paintings – jittery in the light, a bit dark, mysterious and questioning, looking for a way….
Thank you to the model, Natalia for realizing my idea 🙂
One photo from this series was once again selected by the photo editors of Vogue Italia 🙂
Summer starts beautifully, another portrait full of girlishness and tenderness (every nude is a portrait, although not every portrait is a nude 🙂 of the beautiful Natalia 🙂 Grazie editori, molte grazie ragazzi (okay, I don’t speak Italian, but a beautiful language, will have to learn 🙂
And an even earlier portrait that Vogue editors also loved, this time of the lovely Anna 🙂
Summer greetings I send. Weather like in sunny Italy 🙂 As for me it can be 🙂
It’s been a little long since I’ve written anything, but not by the fact that I forgot about my home page, which as a portfolio I polished with colors and appreciate it the most. A bit of responsibilities, a bit of illness of loved ones and taking care of them and a turnaround or rather a spate of various events – well, that was enough. Since September (as of today) I have a solemn resolution to come here more often. I’m glad that I have my online portfolio, because it’s my home and an exhibition that I can show to you in the form I want and that I like, not that one or another social network imposes on me. Not to mention that Fb or Insta have introduced algorithms that have gone very badly for displays from really good photographers. Some people urge me to continue publishing on Insta or Fb, but given these silly algorithms and their social engineering used by the company on F, its predilection for removing content if something doesn’t conform to their view of anything, I think I’ll retire from IG and Fb altogether, though. But to the point 🙂 Photos by Michal Seensoul at Italian VOGUE Photography!
So, well, okay, and in school the teacher repeated that you don’t start a sentence with a so. So I have and I have the Golden Grail dreamed of by many photographers, publication in Vogue.ITALIA 🙂 Or rather, in a photography site supervised by their photo editors. I am happy, very happy. I make no secret of the fact that it gave me a pleasant surprise. Here are my two fresh publications:
As I mentioned, these are very pleasant surprises, but I observed something that makes me wonder. Is it worth sacrificing our style and doing something just to get some magazine or online magazine to publish our photos? To get the grail in the form of a publication that causes some people to open their mouths and say “oh, vogue, well it must be a good photographer”? Here I am reminded of the words of a great photographer and mentor, a teacher of photography, Karol Krukowski, who once said that it is worth following what you feel and what you know, and not to model yourself after others.(And he is a great photographer, a graduate in photography, a doctoral student at the Academy of Fine Arts, so he knows what he is saying). This is the only way to practice real art. First I had a few days to work on each of these images, I painted them with light and in processing gave them the atmosphere I wanted. And a few days ago I processed the pictures specifically to the taste of Vogue photo editors. My soul and the emotions I pour into the colors, into the image make me paint differently. This is how:
This is my painting, which, when I look at it, vibrates with color, emotion, fantasy, tonality and symbolism, this painting, and not those two photos, in a huge size I want to hang on the wall of my studio, which, when I have it one day, will be drowned in the chiaroscuro of the sun, in the glare of the leaves of the trees, in the warmth of the afternoon versus the coolness of the purple blues in the morning or from the evening. As you can see, my image is quite different from the photo that the photo editors of Vogue.IT liked. I think the most important thing in photography is the soul, and as Charles says – the most important thing is to be inspired by what’s in our hearts, not by the current trend in this or that editorial. I’m confident in my colors and it would be fun to talk to these photo editors about why they like this way of processing and not another. Of course, there are a lot of great photographers whose work appears on the pages of Vogue.italia, and it’s worth knowing them – but then there’s the trap of not following your heart, but starting to imitate others. There are some interesting photos on the pages of Vogue Italia in the photography section. But is it worth doing everything including giving up one’s style, discarding all knowledge of art, just to get some “stamp”? In my opinion, no.
To sum up: what makes us have our unique style is a thorough knowledge of painting and its history, the same with photography, and work – analysis of one’s colors, framing, processing, and above all heart and emotions, sensitivity in life and how we look at the world. I consider following my heart to be essential in photography, painting, poetry or any field of art. Although it is known – if something is done for clients – then we listen to their guidance.
Certainly then there will be those who will shout, “this is not the way to sing”. 🙂 But about that in the next episode 🙂 I already invite you to the next entry, it can be interesting 🙂
By the way, one more Vogue award-winning photo from a shoot with Ms. W 🙂 of this year:
This time my street photos were highlighted. Photos taken with a phone, but it is known that a DSLR is not always with me, and the good old Nokia 808 is still with me – just to take pictures. Another thing is that street photos are taken in a very close relationship with another person, often a bigger camera than a phone simply would not allow to capture that decisive moment, embarrassing people. Honorable mentions from the following groups: @1415MobilePhotographers, @bnwmagazine and @grupamobilni and @newswroclaw.
Street photography teaches perceptiveness, waiting for the decisive moment but also visual language. Can visual language be universal, or is it different for everyone? One thing is certain, every person perceives the world differently. But some things are common to everyone 😉
