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In the Spring of
1998, I was traveling on a ship to Cyprus. The ship was old, not very
comfortable, and not very clean. Something like a solarium was arranged
on the upper deck. There, a group of elderly tourists from Poland spent
most of their time.
Stout, unsmiling, full of respect for their pastime and their social
dignity: “here we are, having a good time, on the ship, as much
vodka as one can wish, a bit more money won’t harm. . . ”
They were tanning themselves sitting on broken deckchairs and falling
asleep on towels spread on dirty floors. Sleep has exposed them; they
let down their self-confidence and stopped playing their roles. The
sphere of their interests, their aims, and their occupations, have left,
dissolved in the hot air. Traveling the depths of the sea for this system
of distractions—created by man for himself—in order to not
remain face-to-face with the truth of his existence.
I captured these moments of sleep, motionless, truth. In them, distinctly
came through the illusion of pretension of my Poles, for self-assertion
appeared their complete absurdity; an intolerable emptiness contracted
around them.
The small format of the prints has allowed me to compress to the limits,
the world of the sleeping people, so the logic of the absurd has become
unquestionable. That’s how the “Sleepers” series has
started.
The works were originally captured onto the black and white negative
film. The film was scanned into a digital file, and the digital image
was manipulated. The final prints were produced on Hahnemuhle “Mould
Made German Etching” inkjet coated paper using an Epson 1290 printer
and dye inks.
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