Tomasz Sobieraj

I'm a geographer and hydrologist, but art is and always was my passion, both in theory and in practice. Five years ago I decided to concentrate my energy on photography, so I quit my good but slavish job, and started professionally do what I always wanted, and what I did as amateur.I taught myself rudiments of photography years before this decision, so I had no problems with technical and aesthetical aspects of photography, but I used my camera primarily as a tool for capturing reality, not as a creative tool for visualization of metaphysical questions. Nowadays I'm going through the changes, some conceptual photographs and still lifes appears, but life, humans, body, landscape, are still the main subject, content and essence of my pictures, equally important as their composition and technique.

I don't like too much philosophy hidden behind the work of art - it's often only a necessary evil, especially when art is technically and aesthetically poor. Maybe I'm a backward, but I still would like to have Donatellos David, not Manzoni's Artist's shit in my living room (does anybody know, who is Manzoni?)Though I'm a commercial photographer, I don't have a studio or other trappings associated with being a professional. I work mainly in my basement, use window or artificial continuous light, but many of my commercial works were made in the cityscape, with natural lighting. I use different cameras, from pinhole to digital, but black and white film in medium format camera is what I like the best. I respect commercial work, but my fundamental concern is fine art photography. My works are in private collections in the USA, Israel, Austria, Spain, Germany and Poland. If you would like to know more about my work, please visit my web site, or send me a mail.