Light is an essential part of any photograph. My working processes, my choice of camera all depend on the effect I want to create. An unborn photograph is first imagined in one’s mind, lingers there, and then the occasion presents itself, the light, the camera in one’s pocket and only then it is “ghosted” on the film just as few seconds ago it was in one’s mind to be resurrected through developing. Black and white film, my developing of it, my developing processes in the black chamber, billion shades of gray, and my diary with times of exposure are all part of the ritual. Hybrid process with scanned negatives, corrections on Adobe Suit, prints on aluminium in professional labs, as well as shooting on digital back are part of my ecumenical practice of photography.
Although I have always avoided affirming an artist statement, forty years of active photographical practice, regularity of the chosen themes and motives, obsessions that pop up and can be distinguished speak for themselves. I have made a portrait of almost every person I had an interesting conversation with. Places that I loved and hated, with which I was in a sort of dialogue take an enormous part of my archives. Flipping through them, you encounter a photographer’s autobiography; billion of precious trifles, many today lost things, things that changed its owner, wilfully, unwillingly, lost countries, the book of the dead. Finally, it is all about Time. Not just the time as we perceive it, but the Poet’s Time, the time in relation to one’s soul and the world that surrounds it. In many a year from now, in forgotten Times that are to come, I would wish that a person standing in front of a remnant of my photograph experiences it like one experiences a poem, today.