Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski

Friday, July 31, 1998

In 1998 Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski had an interview with the psychologist/photographer Theo IJzermans on the occasion of the publication of the “VISTA”-book.

Excerpts from this interview:
Why did you stop making sequences in 1985?
Making sequences was an aid to my own personal growth. In 1985 I realised it would eventually hold me back if I were to go on using sequences for that purpose. They were rapidly becoming less and less effective. Also, after fourteen years of making sequences I felt I’d said just about all there was to say in that particular visual idiom. I didn’t want to repeat myself and go on producing variations on old themes. I didn’t want to become an epigone of myself. I wanted to keep on growing and explore new avenues in photography. The images in the book “VISTA” are the outcome of that process.

Ten years on you went back to the places where you’d made your sequences. Why was that?
In 1995 I returned to the places in Mexico where I shot my sequences. As an experiment. I didn’t go there so much with the idea of producing new pictures. I just thought it would be interesting to go back ten years later and see what would happen; what memories it would trigger, whether I’d get round to any photography. I naturally had my cameras with me, as I always do when I travel. I spent the first part of my trip freeing myself from the sequences. This had been a gradual process that had been going on for ten years but by returning to Mexico I was able to consciously work through the final phase.

What do you mean by freeing yourself?
Sequences had always been a very explicit form of expression. They had a huge impact on the outside world as well as on my own interior world. The impact they had on me was enormous. I worked on them intensively for fourteen years, sometimes for as long as eight months at one location. I would become profoundly involved with a subject - and also with the purity of life that was necessary to produce a sequence. It was an all-consuming activity and it demanded total self-sacrifice.
In 1985, in a fit of youthful impetuosity, I suddenly gave up making sequences. Just like that. A cyclist who’s been racing for years withdraws gradually. He knows he’ll have physical problems otherwise. When you’ve been deeply involved with a project like sequences for a very long time you ought to do the same. But I didn’t realise that at the time. The sudden stop sent me cold turkey. I started wondering whether there was any point to life any more, whether my days as a photographer were numbered. I was twenty-one when I started making sequences and I stopped when I was thirty-five. By then they’d become an obstacle, as if an insurmountable mountain were blocking my path. They stood in the way of my creative and conceptual photography. Everything I photographed after that I compared to my sequences. I was haunted by the unwholesome idea that I would never be able to produce anything better or more innovatory. At the time it was as if at thirty-five my career was over. And I was doomed to lead the marginal, futile existence of someone who had once produced some interesting pictures. (more…»)

Friday, July 7, 1989

In July 1989 Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski had an interview with the psychologist/photographer Theo IJzermans.

Excerpts of this interview:

I was trained as photographer at the Kunstakademie in Breda, mainly under Hans Katan, and then at the Kunstakademie in ’s-Hertogenbosch under Wim Noordhoek.
Noordhoek worked in the tradition of landscape photography. Once I’d graduated at twenty, I took this tradition further, I travelled, intending to photograph landscapes and do portraits of local people. All this time things were happening inside me. I was searching for my own identity and trying to absorb the experiences I had had before I was twenty. I was using photography as a therapeutic aid, though I wasn’t so aware of that then.
It wasn’t clear at first why I went to Schiermonnikoog in 1971. I stayed there for weeks on end, going for endless long walks and taking lots of photographs. That was where I made my first sequence. I saw something far away on the horizon. I didn’t know what it was, but was curious enough to want to find out. I decided to record the slow process of discovering what the object was by taking a photograph every so many metres. That process of discovery is reconstructed when the photo series is shown in an exhibition or in a journal. I understood straight after that first series that I’d trodden new ground in photography, and there was a lot of it still to be explored. That was more or less the moment that I finally broke away from my academy training and the influence of my teachers.
I continued to make sequences until 1984, exploring further each time. I travelled specially to places in Europe, North Africa, the United States and Mexico which were ideal for sequences.

Apart from the sequences I concentrated on photographic projects, as a counter-weight to bring my work more into balance. Making the sequences was a lonely business; it was also a very specific photographic form. I was in danger of over-specializing. I didn’t want to go exclusively in one direction. The sequences were successful quite quickly. They were first exhibited in 1972 in the Noord-Brabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch. They sold well enough to give me financial independence. I felt I was in danger of becoming isolated. The success of the sequences could end up limiting the way I functioned as a photographer.
I believed then as now, that photographers are different from painters because their photographic technique opens the door to so many more possibilities. They can work much more socially. He or she can reflect opinions that lend themselves to photographs and perhaps play a leading and influential role in the social processes that are at work. I tried that too in my sequences. They’re about awareness and how to interpret reality, about how reality is related to oneself. It’s the reflection of a process of awareness which can be of value to the viewer. (more…»)