Solastalgia
Our home is changing all around us – landscapes and natural ecosystems are undergoing degradation at a rate we are unable to emotionally integrate. While historically chaos and destruction were caused by wars and natural disasters, it is the human need for growth, development, and construction that transformed into a devastating force in the current age. All around the world natural landscapes have been completely ravaged, and not only by wars and large-scale industrial activity. Everyday life – as a sum of hundreds of thousands of homes, small businesses, workplaces, shops, and transportation facilities – has caused a landscape catastrophe. Szymon Rogiński registers Polish townscapes using both a telephoto lens and a wide-angle drone camera. He sees both the intimate emotions, the poignant efforts of local people, and the disastrous effect they contribute to, posing questions of the weight of our presence in the material and virtual world.
Producer: National Institute of Architecture and Urbanism.
Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Co-financed by Institute of Adam Mickiewicz.
Part of the preparation work was realised within the framework of the scholarship of the City of Warsaw in 2018.
Szymon Rogiński (b. 1975 in Gdańsk). Visual artist, photographer, and author of photobooks. Lives and works in Warsaw. With photography as a base for his work and practice, for more than twenty years he has been working in series, focusing on nocturnes and the material qualities of light. His work, present in a number of collections (i.e. MuFo in Krakow, the Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, and the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning in Warsaw), has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. Outside of working solo, he enjoys collaborations, both in artistic and commercial contexts in the role of photographer/director. Inspirations for his works range from David Lynch and road movies, pop culture and Poland (as cliché, phantasm, and place), to the Anthropocene, postapocalyptic scenarios and visions, and the man-altered landscape. Right now, he is in the process of exploring the creative uses of drone photography, photogrammetry, as well as VR.
