Maciej Markowicz has been experimenting with Camera Obscura since 2008, turning rooms, shipping containers into Cameras. Having strong attachment to the alchemy of photography, he began exposing images directly on color photographic paper in 2010. While living in New York in 2014, he built his first mobile Camera Obscura prototype- a van that he turned into a Camera Obscura vehicle. He spent 2 years driving through 5 boroughs of New York City photographing the Metropolis from the inside of the van.
In 2017 He built his Camera Obscura boat and began to travel through European canals and rivers, visiting cities like Hamburg, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The trip to Bydgoszcz from Berlin is a continuation of his journey inside the Camera Obscura boat and is the first time visit of the camera Obscura boat to Poland.
Everything flows, the river never stops flowing and the water connects everything, countries and their people. For Markowicz this trip is the journey of coming back to roots to motherland: Poland. A metaphorical return to homeland after travelling for 20 years in search for his place in the vast landscape of art photography. He found his place inside the moving Camera Obscura vehicle that he often lives and travels with. This Exhibition is the retrospective view into the works from the decade of working with paper negatives and mobile Camera Obscura, which has become his artistic hallmark.
Maciej Markowicz, born 1981, has refined Camera Obscura technique in his work by using moving camera obscura devices that he builds himself. Relying on the basic principles of photography: light andlight-sensitive material, he photographs from inside of the camera obscura vehicle that he often lives and travels with. A true nomad in spirit, he is constantly on the move in one of his mobile Camera Obscuras, ready to make another Motiongraph (a photograph made in motion). Due to the nature of the artist process, exposures made directly on sheets of colour photographic paper resulting in large scale paper negatives, each photograph is one-of-a-kind and a unique artwork. Markowicz’s Camera Obscura technique is a direct ‘light on paper’ process without use of film or digital technology. His work is included in the public collections of French Museum of Photography and the German Bundestag Art Collection and many private collections in the USA, UK, and Europe.