Fading of image I

Danuta Dąbrowska Wojciechowska (1959–) is one of the most compelling contemporary artists associated with Szczecin, and a lecturer at the Academy of Art in the city. She belongs to the generation that debuted in the late 1980s. She creates paintings, objects and photographic series. Since 2006, she has been consistently working on the cycle *Receptors* and its continuation *Fading Image*. The museum collection includes two works from this series – one in the form of a positive and the other as a negative. The featured negative is a black photogram made using digital photography, with a white light source in the centre. It reflects the artist’s sustained interest in the eye and the capacity for perception as something embedded in the human mind, where biological structures are inseparably linked to cultural patterns. As the artist explains: "The cycle *Fading Image* is like peering at the world through a cardboard tube held up to the eye of the camera. It is an image in low light, and therefore devoid of colour, since in darkness the receptors responsible for perceiving colour are switched off." Ryszard Ziarkiewicz – art critic, historian and editor of *Magazyn Sztuki* – has described Dąbrowska’s work as a form of conceptual metaphor. Within this frame, she develops a visual language that is both conceptual and symbolic. However, she goes beyond the usual rules of conceptual art, which tend to emphasise pure ideas and the intellectual nature of the creative process, enriching them with aesthetic and emotional dimensions. Her work invites comparisons with the discoveries of key figures in post-war Polish photography such as Zbigniew Dłubak, Zbigniew Staniewski, Andrzej Lachowicz and Józef Robakowski. Joanna Łozowska