The Lyrical Subject
Kuba Dąbrowski talks to Joanna Kinowska
All Images are presented are part of “Film obyczajowy produkcji polskiej” Exhibition / Zachęta Warsaw Gallery / Images © 2013 Kuba Dabrowski / Courtesy of the artist
Joanna Kinowska: The basic question — are you a photographer?
Kuba Dąbrowski: I work as a professional photographer. I pay taxes as a photographer, have a degree in photography, and use professional equipment. So from this point of view, I am a photographer. And as far as my artistic practice is concerned, I prefer to think of myself as ‘someone who takes pictures’ rather than a photographer. On the one hand, I earn my living from photography, but on the other hand, I do my own thing and the two don’t necessarily overlap. I’m a different person for different people: an advertising agency executive perceives me differently than a magazine photo editor, and the photo editor differently than a photography curator or historian. Each of them needs me for different purposes, and the different people or communities are often actually unaware of the other spheres of my work. As for ‘my own work’, I usually put it like this: you can play the guitar, you can write poems, and you can take pictures — the basic point is to manifest your sensitivity and share a story, not to create attractive images. I like to think that the pictures I take are not made for photography buffs but for people who share my kind of sensitivity.
