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Categories / Found Photography /Tags / Central Europe / Europe / found photography / Online trading / Poland / Social psychology / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off

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How should we interpret the term “REAL FOTO”? Commercially, of course - “truth sells”, and that is the primary function of the images on Allegro.pl (a website where individuals can sell al kinds of things, ed.). The collection curated by Dlugosz is similar in this respect - it seems to yearn for truth in a reality where everything seems fake or fakable. Dlugosz shares the preconception that “truth” - this ideal, untainted territory of authencity - is best viewed from hiding. Only when unaware of the inquisitive gaze does it display its true self. Allegro facilitates this multi-strand, voyeuristic game. The mechanism of spying, exploited to the hilt in pornography, here finds fresh nourishment. These images cater to the specifically conditioned gaze of the artist/collector. Without it they’d be worthless, certainly stripped of their seductive, surreal charm. In this sense REAL FOTO can be seen as a kind of artistic pornography, propelled both by voyeurism and the mercantile exhibitionism of those who took them, and to an even greater extent as a shameless (at the expense of others) titillation of the imagination, an obsessive search for “real”, “naked” photography; the pipe that isn’t a pipe. The mistake that delights. (text by Lukasz Gorczyca)What do photos really tell us about the world? Artistic photos – not a lot. They are testament to the photographer's emotional state, they speak of beauty and enlightenment, but of the world? Reportage photography too seems exaggerated, either too colorful or too black-and-white, so perfectly composed as if intended expressly for an exhibition, an award. There is no shortage of information, too much even; but the world around us remains undiscovered. When immortalizing reality, the artist-photographer inadvertently aestheticizes, with his macro and micro lenses, sepia filters and above all – photoshop. And then it's all over. The world disappears, all that remains is the image. How close then can photography really be to the experiences of everyday life? Is it not the amateur snapshot that best conveys its banality? Photos taken by children and other naïve souls, who take these pictures because they've been told to, because they need to sell something and believe that this is the best way to go about it. Maybe it is. The Mercedes in the cemented-over garden, the muffin-top spilling over the waistband of a pair of too-tight jeans, the stuffed pony portrayed en face and the tumble dryer, distorted faces in wedding pictures, wood-paneling serving as a backdrop for the musclebound salesman or some other road hog. This catalogue of the mundane and the extraordinary seduces art lovers and gives the heretofore anonymous chump a taste of what it means to be an artist. Because anyone and everyone these days can be a documentarian – IS a documentarian. No harm in that. Not a lot of sense either, though. Until someone like Mikolaj Dlugosz comes along and puts this jumble of  things, things, endless things in order; until he does that they just vegetate among all the other digital, disposable files uploaded into cyberspace, attached to auctions. (excerpt of text by photography critic and curator Adam Mazur)