Art Metropole

#11682

Lives of the Unholy

Date

2015

Publisher

Krzysztof Pijarski

Format

Artists' Books

Genre

Photography,

Contemporary photographer and art historian Krzysztof Pijarski is not interested in making narrative images of a place; instead he strives to represent how cultures define themselves through the layering of history and alteration of its artifacts. Lives of the Unholy, Pijarski’s first book translated into English, is a visual archaeology of the city of Warsaw in which he looks closely at Polish monuments that were destroyed during times of political transformation. Reproduced are small black-and-white details of the monuments—not large enough to define their time and purpose but compelling enough to mark the effects of changing times and political agendas. Leaning on the archive theory of towering figures such as Jacques Derrida, Pijarski attempts through his own photographs to capture what he calls the hieroglyphs of Warsaw’s postwar utopian planning.