Disappearance of image II

Danuta Dąbrowska Wojciechowska (1959–) is one of the most intriguing contemporary artists associated with Szczecin and a lecturer at the city’s Academy of Art. She belongs to the generation that began its artistic path in the late 1980s. She creates paintings, objects and photographic cycles. Since 2006, she has been working on the *Receptors* series, which was continued in *Fading Image*, begun in 2010. Drawing on anatomical and neurological knowledge, the artist explores the theme of photoreceptors – the light-sensitive nerve cells that line the retina at the back of the eye and function as sensors of the visual sense. She attempts to illustrate the phenomenon of image perception by the human eye at the moment it becomes motionless and temporarily fixed. When exposed to light for an extended time, the photoreceptors stop responding and sending signals to the brain, and the perceived image begins to fade. As Dąbrowska explains, when these detectors cease to function, the visual image disappears entirely, leading to darkness and breakdown. “The effect of fading is something we often experience unconsciously – for example, during moments of intense emotion, our field of vision narrows to a tunnel-like image. We then perceive only fragments, not the whole, even though it is in front of our eyes. One can look without seeing. The failure to notice change in such moments is caused by sensory overload.” According to art critic and historian Ryszard Ziarkiewicz, the world of Dąbrowska’s photograms is one of natural images – not constructed, but caught by the eye of the lens. Her works exist on the boundary between printmaking and minimalist photography, between abstraction and metaphor. For Dąbrowska, photography serves not as an end in itself but as a medium to be studied and analysed, experimented with and linked to the physiology of vision. Joanna Łozowska