William Mokrynski
follow
Canadian, born 1969
Projects/Portfolios
The Cousins and Neighbours
Introduction
Cipher:
“The Cousins”; US intelligence agents
“Neighbours”; Soviet intelligence agents
For his series of Cold War novels, British author John le Carré invented a spy-world lexicon. While his works are fiction, le Carré based his tales on reality.
This series was produced from a historic archive of negatives acquired through an online marketplace. The photographer, sitters, and location (likely in the US), are unknown. Based on fashions, I believe them to be from the 1950 / 60’s – height of the Cold War era.
The identity of the sitters, and context of the portraits have been lost. These individuals are phantoms roaming the earth. Lost portraits are reduced to signs –– simply a representation of a people, at a certain time in history.
While viewing the archive, roles began to form for these faces of the Cold War. Together they have become a cast of characters from the shadows of espionage.
Final works are traditional silver prints enlarged from the original large format negatives in a wet darkroom. While printing, the surface of the unprocessed photographic paper is masked. Developer is applied in stages while the mask is removed, revealing a process of viscosity and chemical reaction, (a historic photographica becoming lost with time), while clouding the visual identity of the sitters. These are not clear views of those from the past, but views through an erosion of knowledge. Views of those who have taken a new role in the theatre of my mind.
Chrysalis II
Introduction
A dreamworld extension/intrusion of Nylon Chrysalis. Nocturnal wanderings of the universal city.
Nylon Chrysalis
Introduction
Scaffold structures and building coverings can be found in many cities across Europe. Their presence a universal symbol of the city in transformation; cities that are never complete, always in a state of flux.
Within shadows of the nighttime setting, after construction crews have left for the day, these utilitarian structures undergo an aesthetic shift. Bathed in the nocturnal glow of the surrounding city, the quiet and still scaffold takes on new form, becoming a sculptural-like being. Glaring sodium and florescent illumination along with the deepened shadows of night, form an increased dichotomy between the historic permanent structure and the synthetic temporary covering. Affixed to and enveloping host buildings like an insect’s woven chrysalis, these quiet veiled structures conceal a mystery within.
Often encountered within historic city centres or “old towns”, these structures are a by-product of a globalized ease of travel, and an increased desire to see and experience the exotic other. Driven by the economics of tourism, cities cleanse and rejuvenate aged buildings, transforming districts into enticing enclaves of the authentic for the tourist and their gaze. Scaffold and coverings exist within this landscape, yet are invisible to the tourist who experiences this new location through the lens of a camera. Every important moment and sight, captured through the shutter. The tourist’s lens is intentionally averted from scaffold. It is not part of the authentic, therefore does not belong in the photo album “memoryscape”.
Nylon Chrysalis paralyzes the temporal existence of scaffold and coverings. Photography documents the temporary presence of these entities within the urban setting, making visible what is not seen by the tourist. The generic lighting of the nighttime city collapses geographic proximity. Like Italo Calvino’s imaginary city of Thekla (from his novel Invisible Cities), composed entirely of cranes and scaffold, Nylon Chrysalis forms a possible topography; a topography not seen by some, but existing across the cities of Europe.
Eyemazing Editions, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
EYEMAZING Magazine, Issue 4 - 2010, Karl E. Johnson, Picture Books Publishers B.V., Amsterdam, 2010
William Mokrynski is a London based visual artist who has been working with photography most of his life. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, and is included in a variety of collections. He studied photography alongside new media at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto in the 1990s, and later received an MFA in photography at the Edinburgh College of Art / University of Edinburgh. Sharing his lifetime of knowledge and passion about photography, Mokrynski has lectured and led workshops in 8 countries. While Mokrynski’s approach is often a hybrid of new and traditional photographic methods, his work is firmly rooted in the pre-digital realm, which he views as a highly plastic art.
As the world transitions further into the pixel age, a churn of discarded photographic negatives culled from vernacular and professional archives are in circulation. Mokrynski is interested in this seemingly obsolete photographic artefact. Often detached from context and meaning, the photographic image preserved in the negative is reduced to an anonymous visual sign. For Mokrynski, these lost shadows of the past are stanzas for the future.
A monograph for (l, b)?(209°, -57°) Galactic Coordinates, in collaboration with Lucie Award winning EYEMAZING publisher and curator Susan Zadeh, is in the works, along with a short experimental film with filmmaker Dennis Mohr, producer of photographic documentaries, Mugshot, Disfarmer: A Portrait of America, and Remembering Arthur.
How to use our image viewer
Click on any of the thumbnail images to launch the viewer. You can then navigate forward and backward within the portfolio by clicking the left or right side of the enlarged image. Click the add to collection checkbox to automatically add an image to your collection. Image tags or search engine keywords appear below the collections' checkbox and each word or phrase is a link to potentially more image matches.
twitter