DRESSED IN LIGHT | SYLWESTER ADAMCZYK

Text | Justyna Machałowska

The light is already there. On the black stage.

I enter the space naked, but within moments, I feel how the light dresses me in itself. That it “dresses” is precisely the word with which I can describe what I am experiencing.

It is not merely about the visual aspect – the glowing of my skin, but also about how the light touches me. I sense warmth, as if someone has really put some clothes on me.

The light clothes me, but simultaneously unclothes me. All the way to the truth, to the essence of humanness. It helps me light up the way to self-knowledge, reveal my nature. Even though it flows from an artificial source, an element of divineness that people have attributed to light from the dawn of time. As I am lying on that dark stage, I feel the presence of light almost as if it were a person, impel me to a conversation. And that is what ensues.

I talk with the light. The dialogue is spontaneous and sincere.

I converse with the light, I dance with it and with it, I remain silent. I allow it to attire me, and to comb my hair. I get on my tiptoes to reach its rays.

He who photographs is the director of these scenes, and I and the light – his actors. We do not, however, act out assigned roles, but portray ourselves. He walks around, speaks to us – to the light and to me. He takes pictures, capturing the moments in which there is the most of us.

The most important thing is to be yourself, so that what is inside could become externalized.  Naked body dressed in light becomes translucent. Undisguised, bare flesh covered in light allows seeing the invisible – the soul.

The light enclothes me - in itself, but the photographer is also my dresser. He snips the light and drapes it, as a tailor would do with fabric. He does that with great feel for his precious material of light which can slip out of frame.  

At times the light and I forget about him who photographs, as we focus so intensely on ourselves. I observe the light as it travels along my body, depicting me in parts and in my entirety. It depicts me and the space beyond me, so that only my bodily contours are visible. When the light meets my eyes, it bounces off them and becomes amplified. There is more and more of it. Sometimes it flows over the dark stage, it gleams so much that it looks like water, and I feel as if I were swimming in it. Later there is less of it, as it becomes a drop that runs down my skin, spotlighting it. I look at the light as if it were water. Its current is fast-flowing, or it is calm. I watch how the light waves lift up my hair and breasts above the depths of blackness, but the photographer notices it also and captures it.

When the performance ends, the light disappears into its wardrobe of the lamp. I am engulfed by darkness, that which was here before it all began.  For light to come into existence, there needs to be darkness. The contrast created by them makes everything else appear more sharply defined. It was also like this in this case. When after a few days I see the developed photos, I notice how they bear some similarity to stained glass. Blackness and the light emerging from that blackness. The light that not only dresses me, but also permeates me. A new quality is created, as with the sunlight that shines through a sheet of glass in windows of Gothic cathedrals. More becomes visible. Also that which is inside. My emotions and feelings. I feel that the light penetrates them, as well. Robert Grosseteste, the medieval philosopher and theologian, in his work titled “De luce” stated that light affects not only matter, but also that which is spiritual. When I look through the developed photographs, it seems to me here this also happened. It is the metaphysics of light.
Every time when I look at the light passing through the stained glass windows one phrase come to my mind: a spectacle of lights. Now, going through the photos taken by Sylwester, I feel similarly, and see there as well, a spectacle of the Light and ours – of the Dressed and the Dresser.

INTUITIVE PHOTOGRAPHY | Leszek Mądzik

The meeting between the viewer and the creator of an artwork is a process that exerts a decisive influence on unlocking experiences on both sides. During this encounter, there is a special place for the object in the artist’s sphere of interest.  The woman, her body, her mysterious beauty – these are the themes which intrigue us in this relation. Sylwester’s sensitivity directs the judgement on the subject of his photographs through the prism of mystery. The light that that is generated becomes the main character of the dramaturgy of these images. In Sylwester Adamczyk’s photography we have an example of understanding and interpreting the presented bodies as works of art. Emerging and re-emerging from blackness, exposing themselves, they form a specific image that is at the opposite side of the spectrum from what we call pornography. The emotions aroused in us by a naked woman is distant from an attempt to win us over with cheap tricks. Following Sylwester Adamczyk’s work we experience Jerzy Nowosielski used to refer to as ‘temples’ when he was painting women. The works presented in Sylwester Adamczyk’s exhibition are an example of the kind of art that is not frequent nowadays, perhaps even unfashionable.

Text | prof. Andrzej Szarek

The camera is a tool of expression. He who holds it is responsible for everything that has been captured. He touches the truth. Features, such as sharpness, mental shortcuts, the reduction of light and shadow, and most importantly, the gift of being in the right place, make both the Artist and the Artwork. Bewitching with photography is a technical procedure, but freezing time challenges one’s talent. In the voluminous library of photographs, I find a personality for whom a clarity and truth of perception come from the same family. The reason for pressing the shutter release button is the most important. Both when it comes to one’s own personal space, a portrait, a show, the Holy Mass, or one’s beloved person.

BioGRAPHICAL NOTE | Sylwester Adamczyk

Born in 1962 in Męcina, Poland. Artist-photographer, member of the Association of Polish Artists-Photographers, alumnus of the Higher School of Business – National - Louis University in Nowy Sącz, where he lived and runs his photography and publishing business. An actor and director of local theatres: the Workers’ Theatre and the NSA Theatre, co-creator of the Autumn Theatre Festival in Nowy Sącz, one of the largest cultural events on the map of the Nowy Sącz region. He was awarded the Medal of the Centenary of Regained Independence; he received the title “For the Merit to the Sącz Land,” as well as the Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture. Author of many solo photographic exhibitions, including: “Yemen – Land and People”, “America - There”, “The Holy Father in the Polish Highlands of Podhale ’97”, “Pilgrims ‘99”, “GÓROLE, GÓROLE...”, “One-way Ticket”, “Dressed in Light”. He has also participated in several dozen group exhibitions. Awarded and distinguished in many photographic contests, both national and internation, like 1st place among professionals in the ELEMENT category of the first National Geographic Poland Grand Photographic Contest in 2005. He is the author of albums: “Nowy Sącz Mount Tabor” – dedicated to the St Margaret Basilica in Nowy Sącz, Poland, “The Cathedral Basilica in Tarnow – History and Art,” “NOWY SĄCZ – Impressions,” and he co-authored albums “Song of Stary Sącz” – with the renowned photographer Adam Bujak, and “Festival of the Children of Mountains,” “STARY SĄCZ – the Legacy of Saints” with his son Jakub. The album “The Right Honourable NOWY SĄCZ” that he co-authored, with Justyna Machałowska, and put out by his publishing firm “W Sączu”, was nominated in 2012 for the title of “The Most Beautiful Book of the Year” (since 2022, The Most Beautiful Polish Books) in a prestigious competition organized by the Polish Association of Book Publishers.

His photographs from the canonization of Blessed Kinga of Poland by Pope John Paul II in Stary Sącz, Poland, on 16 June 1999, became parts of the permanent elements of the exhibit of the Papal Museum located by the Papal Altar in Stary Sącz.

Sylwester Adamczyk also participated in many group exhibitions devoted to the Holy Father John Paul II, including the monumental exhibit “John Paul II, the Holy Man: To the Ends of the Earth,” which was shown in cities throughout Poland and in the United States, in New York, NY; Salem, MA; Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; Doylstown, PA (the American Częstochowa).  This exhibit, organized by the “Kwadrat” Publishing House from Kraków, was co-authored by, among others, the Papal photographers: Adam Bujak, Grzegorz Gałązka, Arturo Mari, Ryszard Rzepecki. In his portfolio Mr Adamczyk has many publications documenting Pope John Paul II’s visits to his Homeland.

As an artist-photographer Sylwester Adamczyk collaborated with many renowned Polish publishers, including „BIAŁY KRUK” and the “KWADRAT” in Kraków, “BIBLOS” from Tarnów, or the Publishing House of the Tarnovian Diocese “PROMYCZEK” from Nowy Sącz. He also cooperates with the Visual Stage of the Catholic University of Lublin, established and directed by Leszek Mądzik, documenting its theatrical productions. His photographs have been included in many publications, including albums, dedicated to the Visual State and Leszek Mądzik.
BioGRAPHY | Justyna Machałowska

Born in 1977 in Nowy Sącz. She graduated in Polish literature and language from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where she also finished a post-diploma literary-artistic course.

In 2009, she received the Maciej Słomczyński Award for her debut book of poetry “Thighs on Which Dog Sleeps.” She is the author of the text (epistolary prose) and co-author, with Sylwester Adamczyk, of the album project titled "The Right Honourable Nowy Sącz" (nominated to “The Most Beautiful Book of the Year” of the Polish Association of Book Publishers in 2012), and she has authored texts and illustrations for a book for children, “Colour to Cuddle.”

Her texts have been also included in anthologies: „Pretext,” „Man in Green Trousers,” “Slapidarium,” and in “Oder” (Polish: “Odra”), “Arteries,” “Polish Daily,” and in the almanac “The Literary Carnival of Bronowice,” as well as “Południca,” a literary supplement to a regional monthly magazine „Sądeczanin.” For many years she participated in cyclical meetings of an informal literary group „Piórnice” organized in the Dworek Białoprądnicki Cultural Centre in Kraków. She co-edited the Nowy Sącz monthly magazine „Our Beskid” („Nasz Beskid”), and she also authored texts for the Polish language press of the Polish diaspora abroad. She has authored covers for books, she paints, illustrates, she runs an atelier “The Workroom in a Paint Box.” She also collaborates with the publishing firm “W Sączu” in Nowy Sącz.

She is interested in theology, religious art – medieval and folk, icon writing, as well as the themes connected with the body and the sacred. She enjoys reading and looking through books. Because of this, she is attracted to the Medieval illuminated manuscripts and book art, the coexistence of word and image, and in their interaction.



(t/r AK)