Digital Paradise Digital Paradise
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The exhibition “Paradise 101” at the Manggha Museum in Kraków. © Wojtek Wieteska
Art

Digital Paradise

An Interview with Wojtek Wieteska and Ania Diduch
Joanna Kinowska
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time 14 minutes

The Paradise 101 exhibition summarizes 29 years of photographing Japan by one artist: Wojtek Wieteska. Two minimalist spaces at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków are filled with 411 metres of photographic paper presenting 555 images. Joanna Kinowska speaks with the curator and artist about Japan, time travel and the photographer’s archive.

Joanna Kinowska: The numbers are enormous: 555 photographs, almost 30 years of capturing Japanese reality. Additionally, the very best venue for presenting an Asian-themed exhibition. Before we talk about your vision of Japan, I have to ask what intrigues you about this country the most?

Wojtek Wieteska: I am captivated by the unique mentality and organization of space. The atmosphere of the island. The advantage of fish over meat. The simplicity, especially in expressing beauty. The lack of attachment towards the idea of ‘authenticity’ and ‘copy’. The oldest Shinto shrine in Ise is by design rebuilt every 20 years. It is so refreshing! It means that the whole entourage of classical photography with its hierarchy of closed editions is very conventional. But mostly, I understand Japan through the forms and through art. I have spent there eight months in total. The last time was in spring 2019 with my partner Ania, the curator of Paradise 101. As soon as flights to Tokyo are unfrozen, we want to travel to Hokkaido. I sense there are some winter landscapes with my name on it…

Originally, Wieteska’s Japan was all black and white. Now it is colourful, and snowless, as you said. How have your optics changed over the years?

WW: It has not changed, only my mind evolved. And how exactly is best exemplified by the two identical spaces of Manggha Museum, which are placed one over another. They host entirely different photography installations and narrations. Just like the leitmotiv of Paradise 101, communication, suggests where we paired a black-and-white image from 1996 with a red photograph from 2019. Two worlds, of analogue and digital photography; one thought.

Zdjęcie z wystawy "Paradise 101" w Muzeum Manggha. © Wojtek Wieteska
Zdjęcie z wystawy “Paradise 101” w Muzeum Manggha. © Wojtek Wieteska

Let’s talk about this evolution then. The sum of experiences, films watched, books read, life changes, etc. They must be relevant to your perception and style of working.

WW: Sure, but I believe more in subtraction than

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Also read:

Kyotographie Kyotographie
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“The Forms of Nature – 100 Years of Bauhaus”, Alfred Ehrhardt. Photo: Wojtek Wieteska
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Kyotographie

A Conversation About the Future of Photography
Ania Diduch, Wojtek Wieteska

In his The Japanese Chronicles, the Swiss writer and traveller Nicolas Bouvier wrote that Kyoto belongs on a list of 10 cities whose quality of life should be sampled by everyone. It is definitely worth living there just for the annual Kyotographie photography festival. At the start of the 21st century, the heart of avant-garde thinking about the medium of photography beats in this ancient capital of Japan. Art historian Ania Diduch talks with photographer Wojtek Wieteska.

In art, just like in art tourism, there are no coincidences

Ania Diduch: Kyotographie doesn’t resemble any of the photographic festivals I’ve ever been to, although we almost missed it because of you.

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