Natalia Poniatowska: ‘Twelve Dying Palm Trees’
For the past few years, recent graduate Natalia Poniatowska has received an impressive amount of deserving acknowledgement and press for her work through a steady stream of artist talks, exhibitions, awards and it's clear to see why...
After being struck by the cataclysmic change in the palm trees of Greece, she created the series ‘Twelve Dying Palm Trees’. This series is a personal response to the red beetles’ larvae who dug holes in the center of the palm trees which led to them being destroyed. The subsequent photobook and series of prints that were exhibited to document this work, also represent the effects on producers, importers, private business owners and hoteliers of Greece who have planted many palms themselves. Natalia specifically focused on one hotelier named Maria, photographing the dying palms by Maria’s hotel. Researchers are attempting to combat this situation, although this is still in its early stages in Greece.
Seeing this devastation of life, Natalia felt a calling as a visual artist to document and record these palm trees before they disappeared completely and tragically lost their beauty – she made the work ‘Twelve Dying Palm Trees’ before they were cut down in April 2018.
Hey Natalia, congratulations on being recognised by so many fantastic photography platforms including ‘It’s Nice That’ in the year of your graduation with a Fine Art degree! Let’s start by you telling us the reason you got into the medium and why you are drawn to practising fine art and documentary photography?
Thank you Holly, I know, I’ve had an amazing time after graduation, but I think it’s not only because of my work but also because I didn’t want to stop making new work. After graduation I was maybe one of three people from my year group who didn’t take “time off from being artists” after the degree show as the degree show was so intense. It was intense but it was what I love doing.
I got into photography when I was thirteen years old and attended a film photography course in a local youth center in my home town in Poland. I found an old Zenit 12xp in my Grandparent’s basement and started taking pictures. I was inspired by the process of developing film and working in the darkroom. I will never forget the first time I saw a photograph showing up in the developer; it’s so amazing to feel that you made it all – from loading a film to the final print.
For years I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, everyone from my high school started some type of “normal” university straight after A-level exams and I decided to move to Birmingham to work as a waitress and earn enough money to afford a DSLR. Photography has always been a part of my life and at that stage I knew that it could also become a profession and I started working as a commercial and fashion photographer when I moved to Glasgow to start a Fine Art Photography course at The Glasgow School of Art. I have never received a student loan so I continued working throughout the four years of studying. It was difficult as we know how expensive photography is (printing, framing), and especially surviving in the art school, where most of the people come from wealthy backgrounds or receive a student loan.
It’s not easy to categorise my photography – in my artist statement I say:
“I am an observer. Through digital and analogue photography, still and moving images, I explore the potential ground that exists between fine art and documentary photography. Drawing inspiration from various conditions of the reality around me, from the great interest in the modern, dynamic art scene but also from my personal experiences, I believe in the power of images to convey the emotions, truths and challenges of modern reality. Having spent the majority of my life away from my motherland, I often return to the theme of homesickness and belonging in my artwork. My approach to picture making is to present ordinary, non-idealised, never staged reality. Such practice is the formulation of an interest in things as they are. By using only one lens which is the most similar to a human field of view, I am capturing the moments and non-moments that drag my attention. I am a sentimental and nostalgic artist and the camera is the best tool to anchor oneself to memories and emotions that are constantly fleeting. My work starts with a strong interest in the moment, light or a situation. The process of looking begins before taking a photograph and continues afterwards. Selecting pictures, printing, making connections, framing or setting up an exhibition space, all of it seems connected to the way of seeing. I immerse myself in the medium fully and utterly.”
What can you tell us about your recent body of work: ‘Twelve Dying Palm Trees’?
I’m a lot better at “showing” rather than talking about my images so it’s best to look at my project on my website!
It seems the series is clearly an important and environmentally political matter to you and you detail specifically about the hotelier, Maria, suffering from the menacing effects of the beetles. Could you explain in some depth, why you wanted to do this project?
There was no other way I could help but to show the beauty of these dying palm trees, especially to those like Maria and others who for them, there was no beauty involved. The palm trees had been cut down a few days after my exhibition. I captured what was left from a good time before they were gone completely. I guess my willingness to do the project and the fact that I’ve noticed the change and photographed it (as it wasn’t planned, I was there on holiday with my Mum) comes from my nostalgic personality. It made me sad that the palm trees were dying and I remembered them with some beautiful green leaves from a year before when we visited the same Airbnb. I love plants and “rescued” a few dying ones from the street that people threw away, but there’s nothing I could do for these palm trees apart
from capture them and then also exhibit them as standing columns, so they are almost brought back to life.
The exhibited forms of your work consist of framed and unframed prints and a published photobook. Why did you choose to present your work in this manner?
All the decisions came from studio work and a long process of: playing around with photographs, printing on different paper, making sculptures, mock-ups of exhibitions, etc. It was easy to play around with twelve final photographs that are a series of very similar palm trees. I guess it made it easier to then be more creative with the presentation. My other projects require more time spent on selecting images and thinking about pairs or conversations they have with each other.
The photobook has been arguably made in a zine fashion, with simple binding and no hard cover. Could you explain your reasoning behind this and did you make more than one copy to distribute?
I made twelve copies at £12 each. There’s one spread in the book with an overlap of images and the text about the project at the end; it has a simple cover and title. I printed it myself on a kind of drawing paper that has a beautiful and visible texture. Each copy has a different layout – some palm trees are on different pages – as I was making test prints to find the best order for the photographs and then noticed there’s no “best”, so decided to keep test prints as final books, each very unique.
How did you choose the design and content for the book and why?
Similarly to exhibition design – it took many hours of test printing. I guess everything I do and all my final decisions are inspired by my knowledge about photography, art and my interest in photo books and the contemporary art scene. I’m like a sponge – I read a lot online, I attend many cultural events and I guess it all helps with my choices of design and my aesthetics.
Some of your images of the trees have been printed and mounted onto columns, meaning the photographs wrap around them taking on a tree-like form. Was this created in such a way to aid the audience in relating to the physicality of the subject matter or just as a creative viewing platform?
It's actually just prints standing on their own – no columns – the prints make the columns. I am still working on a better way of presenting them for the next exhibition, I am thinking about making actual columns. For my degree show, I made MDF stands for the palm trees as I knew the prints themselves would be too fragile for a busy exhibition. But I do like the fact that for my solo show they were just prints. The work was made in this form because I like it aesthetically and what it does to the audience – I’m leaving room for interpretation. The palm tree photographs are scans of thirty-five millimeter film.
What sort of responses from viewers did you get from exhibiting this work and were they as you had hoped?
I got a few people from France and Italy saying that is a common problem in their home towns and their parents lost their family palm trees in a similar way. I got many people saying it’s amazing how it looks like architectural columns. I sold one of the prints so I guess it could also make a good art work to be put in a home for purely aesthetic reasons. I hoped for emotions and feelings to be felt. That’s my main hope with my art work – I want people to feel something, to experience my photographs, to stop, look and think. It’s my main goal after spending five years in the art school and attending many exhibitions that I couldn’t even understand.
In your description of ‘Twelve Dying Palm Trees’, you detail how the cataclysmic beetles arrived in Greece with the palm trees from North Africa, which were simply imported only for the expectation of exoticism from the athletes and tourists of the Olympic Games. Would you say there is an underlying message you are trying to communicate; to provoke thought in exploring how conforming to society’s aesthetic expectations of places can be damaging to its original environments?
I don’t think so, but it’s fine if it’s interpreted this way – I wanted to just explain what happened in a clear and simple description. I did a lot of research on this subject and shortened it down to the project description, but it’s definitely not made to say “look at the damage caused by import from other countries”. It’s more about how we see palm trees as a symbol and how they always remind us of colourful pictures from holiday and yet these are black and white dying palm trees. So, to have photographed them removed from their typical landscape is maybe quite interesting but also provoking.
You've exhibited your work on a number of occasions, how did these opportunities come about?
It depends, I guess many of my exhibitions were group shows that we organised in the Glasgow School of Art and the others I was selected for the galleries approached me: 12 Star Gallery, London and ARCHIP, Prague. However, there are also exhibitions I applied for like the one in Cape Town.
What motivates you to make the work you do and which environment do you find you have to go to, to be most creative?
For many years of living in Glasgow I did not take a single picture there for my art. I was photographing mostly in Poland, especially during years of working on the subject of homesickness. But mainly I make new work in new places – places I see for the first time or touristy places where no one cares that you carry a camera. As a photographer, I’m a bit shy – I avoid portraiture but I like taking pictures of people from behind or far away. Iceland was a perfect place to make new work, but also Greece and Mallorca. I guess it’s difficult as this means I’m never on holiday because if I go somewhere, I make new work and then come back to the studio and work on it. But I can’t imagine going somewhere without my camera.
As you have recently graduated from a photography degree course, what advice would you give to upcoming graduates wanting to make their way in the industry?
I have a lot to say about it so feel free to invite me to do a talk in London! I recently gave a talk to students at Edinburgh College of Art followed by tutorials with final year students. I have many pieces of advice in terms of applications and organization. Nevertheless, the best and shortest piece of advice would be what I got from Thomas Joshua Cooper when I had this weird time of doubting photography, when he said: “You need to trust your work”. At first, I was like “hm thanks great, super advice”, but with time I understood that this is true. You need to trust in what you make.
What can we expect from you in the fast-approaching year of 2019?
In March I’m taking part in the New Contemporaries exhibition in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. I would love to finish a project about my Grandma’s story of leaving Lviv, but that project requires some funding so I’m currently spending most of my free time sending applications for some support with this project. Ideally, it would be finished as a book and an exhibition. I also want to do something about my book “Moments I Never Showed You” – I have only two exhibition copies available but I would really like to find a way to print more and publish them. Additionally, I keep making new prints from my residency in Iceland. I’m also thinking about a masters, but I don’t know and I keep an eye out for open calls and opportunities for exhibitions as I really love showing my work. I also attend many exhibitions and try to keep writing about them on my Instagram.
You can check out more of what Natalia's been up to and all her photography work here on her website and pick up a copy of the book here - also be sure to follow her on instagram, facebook and twitter
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