History of art and history of photography abound in various depictions of the human body. Artists often strive to show the beauty and the perfection of the bodily form by creating images of young and fit men and women.
People are bombarded with them in their surroundings. Alicja Brodowicz takes a slightly different approach and focuses on the flaws and imperfections. By locking her gaze and camera on small and carefully selected fragments, she chooses the parts that are faulty, distorted and often plain ugly.
The human body in her photographs in nothing like the classic ancient sculptures and does not bear any semblance to the nude photographs of beautiful models. However, in the series of diptychs, human body functions as the microcosm.
The photographer takes interest in its’ fragments: hair, scars, texture of skin, wrinkles, stretch marks and freckles. She looks for individual particularities, distinguishing features and irregularities.
The opposing side of each diptych is taken up by photos of nature. The photographer also selects fragments of it: surface of water, grass, tree bark, stones, dry leaves, branches.
Nature is the macrocosm here.
Later, she combines the two images to create matching pairs. She focuses on finding converging lines, textures, similarities in layout and analogies in composition between the microcosm and the macrocosm and tries to depict the unity between the human body and nature. These are visual exercises, an attempt at finding perfection in the imperfect, flawlessness in the faulty and beauty in even most ordinary aspects of the human form.
The project is in the process of creation. All of the photographs were taken in the course of the last two months.
About the author:
Alicja Brodowicz is a graduate of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (Czech Republic).
Finalist and laureate of photography competitions (IRIS Award – Australia, Photo Annual Awards – Czech Republic, International Photography Awards – USA, 7th Julia Margaret Cameron competition – Great Britain).
Winner of 1st place (portrait category) in Black and White Child Photo Competition.
Honourable mentions: International Photography Awards 2015 – Category: Children, MIFA 2015.
Laureate of Debuts 2016 and TIFF Festival Rivers and Roads 2016.
Alicja’s main focus is on subjective documentary and fine art photography.
