Philip King - sculptor

I studied  Philip King’s art at the Institute of Art History, Jagiellonian University a few months prior to our totally unexpected encounter. This portrait was taken during our first meeting.

A single heartbeat

We calculate the passing of our lives using watches, calendars, diaries, but it is our heartbeat, which is a true measure of our beings. The flow of blood in our veins is more rapid, when we experience strong emotions, when we are excited or anxious and it slows when we are gently relaxed.

A ticking clock is of no use here.

When we experience different places, when we encounter different people, we feel alive at a different rhythm of subsequent heartbeats.

Taking a photograph lasts as long as a single heartbeat.

Philip King - sculptor

This truly emotional portrait of Philip King, taken in my house in Nunhead, London was showing the future rather than the present time.

On that evening we had a nice, gentle supper, talked about art, travelling and families.

Within a few weeks Philip King’s life was irreversibly altered beyond all expectation.

When we met again, many years since that portrait was taken, Philip King didn’t recognize me. Perhaps I was like an alien from another life, life that Philip King erased from his memory.

Stanislaw Lem with Pegaz

Stanislaw Lem, a writer, who sold many milions of books, films were made from his stories (“Solaris”), inspired us to think about our place in this Universe, was the most gentle, charming and so very wise person.

Never to be forgotten.

Glenda Jackson - unique in her truthfulness

Glenda Jackson, a charismatic actress whom I’d watched in many films beginning with Peter Brook’s Marat / Sade, was posing for me, and yet not posing. I felt that for her acting was only one aspect of her personality, and that fame, Oscars, multiple awards was something she simply took in her stride.

Perhaps that is why I asked her to lean with her back against a mirror, such a quintessential part of a theatre dressing room. The composition of this portrait is governed purely by Glenda Jackson’s psyche.

Cees Meerman - the reality of a strange brew

This portrait of Cees ‘Ani’ Meerman was taken in a photographic studio, in the heart of Amsterdam, while he was touring through Holland with the band Herman Brood & his Wild Romance. The band had a ‘bad’ image which, I must say, that they endeavoured fully to live up to. Band members took me to the Paradiso club, where we drank champagne till early hours and Herman Brood kept offering me cocaine, which I never took. 

For me, this is the document of those hundreds of hours which we spent together on the road. At the time I thought this was a portrait of a person who went too far. Or maybe not far enough. I liked Cees ‘Ani’ Meerman, a vulnerable and sensual man, who probably never found his way out.

Sir Peter Hall - the concentration of one's mind

I was sitting in the offices of Landseer Film Company in London with a coffee in my hand, thinking about my lunch – there were a few interesting restaurants in the area – and listening to a discussion about a film on Sir Peter Hall that the company were working on. Then someone suggested that it would be a good idea if I took some portraits of him that could be edited into the film. This was supremely interesting and I instantly forgot about my lunch. I had not yet met this very famous director of films, operas and theatre performances, who had staged ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett at the youthful age of twenty-four and gone on to found the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

A week later we gathered on the terrace of the National Theatre, on the south bank of the River Thames; Sir Peter greeted each of us with a handshake. Half an hour later we took our positions and the interview began, with Sir Peter talking about Shakespeare, the English language from the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the financing of theatres over the centuries, the role of artists in society, his personal plans for the future, an experimental theatre. 

The only time I could photograph our subject was during breaks, otherwise the sound of my camera would have been recorded as well. The problem was he would close his eyes then and freeze motionless, thinking about his answers – the effect was neither intriguing nor entertaining.

During the third or fourth break Sir Peter lit a large cigar and then I noticed that his hands began to illustrate his, as yet, silent sentences. From then onwards I was looking at him through a camera viewfinder, with a finger on the shutter button, waiting for the sign that would create the portrait. After a few minutes the smoke from the cigar composed itself into a flawless arabesque. The picture was taken instantly.

Bill Brandt - my Master

Years ago, while I was still a citizen of communist Poland, still behind the Iron Curtain, I received a letter from faraway Primrose Hill in London. In response to my photographs, David Bailey had written to encourage me to study Bill Brandt, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. Needless to say, I took his advice right away and for the next few months spent many hours gazing at deeply moving, beautiful, perfect images by those amazing photographers.

Five years later I arrived in a black taxi at Bill Brandt’s London apartment and was ushered into a large room with a dark floor and a view over Holland Park. I knew this space from his photographs of nudes and portraits, all those nuances of light and shadow, tall windows, furniture, and I could with the greatest of ease imagine the physical presence of the models who posed for Bill Brandt there.

After a short while Bill Brandt emerged from his darkroom and without much preamble examined my photographs, choosing those he liked. I asked him then if I could take portraits of him. He accepted, so I set up my Canon A1, put the camera in front of my face and realized that his deep, observant eyes were piercing into mine, while I was focusing on them through the lens.

Soon after I was looking at Bill Brandt again, but this time it was in my darkroom and the same eyes were emerging from a print still immersed in a developer.

A week later I visited Bill Brandt with those portraits. They were my homage to him.

John Peel and power of the radio

One sunny day I came to the BBC’s London Headquarters in Portland Place to take photographs of John Peel, a legendary music presenter on Radio One. I listened to his programmes for many years. As we know, the voices of radio presenters live in our homes and their personalities are often better known to us than those of our next-door neighbours. To my joy John Peel was as natural and authentic as I’d imagined. But first he apologized for being a bit late for our appointment, the reason being that he was playing football with his friends. 

I just smiled. 

Then he invited me to his office, which was tiny, with records all over the place. He immediately started to play music by an unknown band, an album he’d bought at the street market in Amsterdam couple of days earlier. Funnily enough I knew the place well. It was close to the studio where I’d photographed musicians from the band Herman Brood & his Wild Romance.

While I was taking this portrait, he told me that years before, once a week, he would send a recording of his late-night programme to the Polish Radio. At that moment I realised that I’d been listening to his choice of music, if not his voice, in my darkroom in Krakow during the years of communist rule. I thanked him for this gesture of giving us, locked behind the Iron Curtain, a glimpse of another world.

Portrait photography is created in a fraction of a second by at least two people, two different personalities, a model and a photographer, in a moment of special affinity

We walked up the stairs of St Paul’s Cathedral with the afternoon sun on our backs. I was going to take photographs of Albert in a secluded area, a sort of arcade, set into the façade of this magnificent church built after the Great Fire of London in the seventeenth century.

A diffused, warm light permeated the space, while sharper shafts of sunlight shone between the columns. This complex duality of light suited our ‘stage’ perfectly.

The tall, dark, heavy door behind us was locked, so we knew that our session would not be disturbed.

I loaded a film into my Canon A1.

Albert paced about like a tiger checking its territory.

I nodded my head and pointed with a hand towards the area where I wanted him to be.

Albert took off and I watched a professional dancer at the peak of his sublime abilities flying effortlessly against the backdrop of a wall made of soft Portland stone. I asked him to jump again and again, and only then did I take the first photograph.

Soulful dance

Sometimes I am being asked by my model "Will you catch my soul?". 

I feel that this question is born out of a desire for a poignant, true image of oneself, but also because of an apprehension that a sudden loss will take place, that I will snatch away the most elusive part of someone's psyche.

My answer is always the same: "That is the intention".

Kew Gardens, London

On a sunny, late October day I took Michael Ho, a dancer of impeccable perfection, to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Unusually, the place was almost completely deserted, giving Michael a grand stage to choreograph his movement. I just watched his figure and released a shutter at the right time.  

Primrose Hill, London

Open spaces are extremely rich in diversity and we must accept it, because it is all beyond our control. Yet we need to be careful, because a landscape may overwhelm us with its seductive potential, thereby disabling our imagination. That is why open spaces are so tremendously challenging, therefore inspirational. 

The power of music

We met at the entrance to the neo-classical building on New Cavendish Street, London. While we walked up its spiral staircase, I admired the richly varied but soft light inside the beautiful building. Looking ever so distinguished, Roman Jablonski welcomed me into one of the rooms and introduced to his elegant cello, made in 1692 by Giovanni Grancino, the Milanese instrument-maker.

We talked a little about the instrument and then Roman Jablonski settled down to play one of Bach’s cello suites. It seemed only natural that the marble fireplace surround should form a structural frame for the composition. This static background was like a calm base within which an ephemeral music could flow.

I kneeled down low, listening intently to the melody, waiting for the clue from his movement. When it came, I pressed the shutter button.

Taking portraits

An American photographer, Irving Penn, once said that what people hide behind their masks during a photographic session is usually more interesting than they themselves believe. So Penn worked with his models slowly and kindly, patiently coaxing out their inner qualities and complexities, and creating amazing portraits in the process. But I do not have the same luxury of time that he had, so I rush my models to open up as soon as I look at them through my lens.

I took this self-portrait after a long, long day taking portraits of three people in places as diverse as Hampstead, Richmond and the City of London. I was the fourth model of that day.

Darkroom

I set up my darkroom and took a hot coffee to the end of the garden, where I sat down on a marble bench to watch the light and shadows inside a large fern, which for many years adorned the corner of my garden.

Half an hour later I went back to the darkroom, turned the music on and slipped into my world.

Today I was going to print large photographs taken five days previously at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I placed the film inside an enlarger, set the focus, arranged the Agfa Record Rapid paper underneath, exposed and gently slipped it into the developer. It takes one hundred and eighty seconds for an image to reach its depth and contrast. During that time, out of nothingness, out of a rectangular, blank sheet, shapes slowly emerge, transformed by a chemical process into the intricate scene that I’d captured some time before in a fraction of a second.

I leaned over the image, still submerged in the developer, and watched as the musicians with their instruments became clearer and clearer, the velvety blackness of space getting darker and darker. Above all I was observing the figure of the conductor, who was leading a large orchestra with his gesture.

It is amazing to see how influential and powerful our hands are.