Mass of photography festivals of various ranks, ranges and locations floods Poland. Among them the fight for supremacy is more and more clearly led by those which offer the viewer something more than merely a presentation of photographs. I do not only mean thematic events which, by definition, are focused on a given and previously determined issue or phenomenon, but most of all problem presentations that pull the viewer out of his or her passive role of an image-eater. Instead, they offer not always convenient, but usually dynamic and unpredictable confrontation with stereotypes and with what the French call idées réçues – “obtained ideas”, ideas and views “obtained” by an individual from others and applied in a quite inconsiderate way inside his or her world view. Such thought “picklocks” were once formed by being a member of a given clan, social or professional group; nowadays a visibly deciding role in this field is played by media, especially those that use image, that is TV and illustrated press using photography. And here we come back to the main thread of this text, that is to photography and the selection of photography festivals, among which the second edition of Transphotography seems to deserve more than just a passing glance.


Still, my using the French expression idées reçues is something more than just a display of erudition: because Transphotography is a Polish-French duet, combining the experience of the French board of the Transphotographiques festival from Nord-Pas de Calais with the intuition of the Polish art director who, for many years, was connected with one of the most influential magazines, directed, a little perversely, “not to all photographers”. No surprise that this duet, interesting form the start, grows before our eyes into a bolder and bolder polyphony, offering the viewers a carefully construed series of photographic projects, with most exhibitions being Polish or even world premieres and one of them made especially on the organizers’ commission. This international project, Boundaries and Transgression, an effect of collaboration with the French Institute, stands for a kind of a main axis of this year’s edition of Transphotography which has exactly the same name. The starting point of the organizers’ meditation on the existence of boundaries and their crossing is this year’s round, 50th anniversary of signing the Treaty of Rome. And even though (which is certainly not known by everyone), on the 25th of March 1957, as an effect of a most comical pile up of various logistic obstacles, the final version of the text was not, by any means, printed yet and the ministers and government delegations’ leaders ceremonially signed the “treaty” which really was a file of empty pages – excluding the first and the last one of two thick volumes! – but the very fact of signing the Treaty of Rome by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg laid strong foundation for the then European Economic Community and today the European Union which France and Poland belong to.

The aim of the main programme of the Transphotography 2007 festival is thus creating a multi-level, visual analysis of the concepts of boundary and its transgression. Among the invited artists there are, among the others: Thibaut Cuisset, Gautier Deblonde, Grégoire Eloy, Léo Fabrizio, Michael von Graffenried, Manuel Litran, Rafal Milach, Olivier Mirguet, Lucia Nimcova, Oiko Petersen, Ula Tarasiewicz, Joanna Zastrózna as well as the duo Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya and the Sputnik Photos association. The Boundaries and Transgression project is signed by the Czech Tomas Pospech, the French Julien Goldstein and François Daumerie, German Kai Ziegner and a Pole Tomasz Rykaczewski. Among the presented exhibitions we will find press photography as well as landscapes coming close to abstract painting; polyphonic photo essays and perverse propaganda photography form a socialist heaven on Earth, portraits of scientists and gay people; colour large format prints next to black & white barite ones. But the common denominator of all these exhibitions gives place to thoughts that far exceed strictly aesthetic impressions, as it will soon turn out.


Therefore – boundaries and transgression. It is tempting to encourage looking closely at these concepts: maybe they bear the echoes of idées reçues? The political level of boundaries, those whimsical lines on the map, dividing people who differ with each other – but not always! – in the language they use, the wrongfully used name of their God as well as the currency they use everyday and the state of their accounts, is only one level of the phenomenon of this name. Other, less visible boundaries run inside every country, evidently dividing, say, the inhabitants of Poland between locals and immigrants, the rich and the poor, townies and hicks, the liberals and the conservatives, eggheads and old bigots, not to mention men and women. On each side of another invisible and subtle, but painfully felt boundary there is a conviction that there is something wrong with the other side. For finally all boundaries of this sort between people start from an impassable boundary of individual experience of every person: we empirically, everyday, almost every second assure and prove that ‘I’ is something completely different than ‘you’, not to mention ‘her’ and ‘him’, present in a conversation only as its objects, never subjects. The same phenomenon is shown by a photographic presentation: the boundary between the photographer and the photographed never disappears, paradoxically even in the case of self-portraits – and the viewer’s glance at a photograph is like pouring salt into open wounds between two human beings. For every military expert will confirm that wherever there are boundaries, there may be a war. And as long as people remain prisoners of their own boundaries, they will be entangled in fight.

So what is the sense of boundaries? Seemingly it is about ever-legitimate fight for keeping one’s identity. Because a boundary clearly defines who we are, when our life ends and someone else’s life starts. Confronting another person is practically about marking out clear and impassable boundaries together with defining the consequences he or she will meet after their transgression. It is boundaries that help us define who we are in relations with other people. This is why we learn today so eagerly how to mark out and strengthen our boundaries, finding out what we want and what we don’t, what we love and what we hate, when we are “really ourselves” and when we are not. There is a common conviction that namely those who marked out their boundaries are able to unambiguously express their own opinions, views and attitudes. But those who didn’t do it are not sure what they think, feel and want. And that is why they easily give in to others’ demands – because they usually lose confidence when they have to defend themselves. And it is boundaries that defend us from being hurt and wounded, protect our values, feelings, energy and attitudes.
On the other hand the very fact of the boundary’s existence is also an encouragement to cross it. Every boundary divides space into the part where we are in and that where we are not. And the place when we are not in always tempts like a forbidden fruit. Hence eternal striving of man to cross boundaries, discover Americas, undermining stereotypes, blowing out found order – because even if up to now it has led to generating new and new undefined boundaries, intuition tells us that this is where the real dimension of human freedom lies. And philosophy as well as physics tells, too, that this dimension is found not really in crossing boundaries, but in realizing they are illusionary. The new model of the world emerging from modern physics is surprising: space and time as well as the division between time and space are relative. Field theories put in doubt the division between material particles and vacuum: one cannot separate particles from the surrounding space; particles exist as places of congestion of the continuous field of space and the Universe is an infinite network of related events. Physicists commenting their results even say that reality comes into existence when it is perceived: there is no boundary between observer and reality: reality does not exist as an external fact, but as a psychic one. As far as photography is concerned – isn’t it an interesting perspective?


Yet philosophy has been claiming for a long time that we are alienated from ourselves, other people and the world, because we cut our experience to pieces divided by boundaries. All our conflicts, fears, suffering and despair are caused namely by boundaries which we consciously or unconsciously impose on our experience. A philosopher Ken Wilber, author of a book with a significant title “No Boundary” clearly states that we live in a world of conflicts and contrasts, because we live in a world of boundaries. If every boundaryline is at the same time a frontline, man will forever stand before another dilemma: the more solid the boundaries he creates are, the more difficult his struggle is. The stronger he holds to bliss, the more he is afraid of pain. The more intensely he strives for success, the more he is afraid of losing. The more tightly he holds to life, the more terrified he is by death. The more he values something, the more scared he is of losing it. Most people’s problems are problems of boundaries and oppositions that are generated by them. And the most frequently used solution to them is an attempt to get rid of one of the opposing poles: solution to the problem of good and evil is the attempt to eradicate evil; solution to the problem of life and death is search for immortality. But it is interesting to observe that a boundary is always treated as real and we constantly use the oppositions created by it. Not questioning the reality of the boundary, we stubbornly believe that the oppositions are equally separate as irreconcilable: life and death, good and evil, love and hate, “I” and “he” – aren’t these categories as different as night and day? And wouldn’t life be much more pleasant if only we could eradicate all the negative poles of the opposition pairs? If only we could overcome pain, evil, sadness and death, life would be so beautiful...

Maybe we should confine ourselves to stating that the existence of boundaries, as well as their crossing, is, as a matter of fact, equally illusionary. A glass half empty is at the same time half full and the element of judgment and segregation of phenomena is in the end as futile as an attempt to turn only left or only right all our lilife. And let us confine ourselves to that, knowing that we are reaching the limit of what, in this synthetic manner, can be expressed here. Thus assuming that boundaries and their crossing are very peculiar idées reçues, poisoned gifts of sort, that people pass from generation to generation, let us, if only for a fraction of a second, listen to the world as a never-ending polyphony, full of unlimited possibilities, constantly escaping any judgment. Because, maybe, it is between this all-embracing and not-judging way of understanding the world as space without boundaries and the prevailing view of the world as an enormous desk full of better and worse drawers, where the one, invisible and significant boundary which is really worth crossing lies. Before, as Lech Majewski rightly notices in his film “The garden of earthly delights” of all of us – women and men, the French and the Poles, photographers and critics – in the final account around 38 litres of water, 12 kilograms of coal and three grams of iron will be left. If I remember the proportions correctly.


Marta Eloy Cichocka