Izabela Lapinska

Izabela Lapinska, polish artist, photographer and film expert, professor of art. I participated in dozens of exhibitions of photography in Poland and abroad and I had numerous publications in many periodicals. My photos are in private collections in France, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Australia, Argentina, USA.
I took part in international projects and scientific conferences which were concerned with the issues of human body in culture.
Photography is not only my profession. It is my way of being in the world. I have worked with the medium for decades, and the longer I photograph, the more deeply I understand that photography is not simply a means of recording what exists. It is a way of learning how to see — and of questioning what, and whom, we have learned to see. My practice is grounded in a profound commitment to the materiality of the photographic image. A photograph is never only an image for me. It is also a physical object: something with scale, weight, surface, density and texture. The paper, the quality of the print, its relationship to the frame and to the architecture in which it is encountered are integral to the work. I approach the photographic print with the attention one gives to a unique object. Handling prints with white cotton gloves and examining them from different distances and positions is part of this process. Such gestures are not an exercise in nostalgia for an earlier photographic culture. They reflect my conviction that the photograph remains a material, collectible and spatial form of contemporary art.

My work begins with close observation. I am drawn to form, structure, texture and to details that are easily overlooked. The camera allows me to approach what may otherwise be difficult to confront: intimacy, vulnerability, corporeality, difference and, at times, the disturbing. The lens becomes a threshold between distance and proximity. It enables a form of encounter in which the act of looking itself becomes part of the subject.
The body has occupied a central position in my practice from its earliest stages. I do not approach the body as an ideal or stable image, but as matter: fragile, changing, vulnerable and resistant. Skin, tissue, faces, gestures and bodily fragments become sites through which questions of identity, sensuality, mortality and perception can emerge. At the same time, my practice increasingly moves beyond the human body toward animals and plants. These encounters reveal unexpected structural affinities between forms of living matter. The distinction between human, animal and botanical becomes less certain.

My long-term project Skin brings these concerns into a single field of inquiry. Human skin, animal tissue and botanical structures are brought into visual proximity, not to establish a hierarchy between them, but to expose their shared material condition. Beauty and decay, attraction and discomfort, vulnerability and resilience coexist within the same image. The skin becomes both boundary and evidence: the surface that separates the self from the world and, simultaneously, the surface upon which time, experience and mortality become visible.
This approach also leads me toward the ethics of looking. There is no innocent eye. Every act of photographing involves selection, framing and a distribution of attention and value. Photography can reproduce established systems of beauty, desire and exclusion, but it can also interrupt them. I am interested in that tension. By bringing overlooked, imperfect or uncomfortable forms into visibility, I seek to create a space in which looking becomes slower, more attentive and less governed by immediate judgment.
Across my practice, the photographic image functions simultaneously as evidence and construction, intimacy and distance, surface and depth. My background in both photography and film has made me particularly attentive to duration, sequence and the relationship between the still and the moving image. Time does not disappear when the shutter closes; it remains embedded in the image as memory, trace, bodily change and material presence.

Paris September 24, 1996I was invited to Paris by famous French photographer Jeanloup Sieff. His mentorship and friendship profoundly shaped my artistic path.

The longer I photograph, the more I am fascinated by what initially appears obvious. Photography has taught me to remain with things rather than move quickly past them — to discover complexity within the ordinary and strangeness within the familiar.
Ultimately, my practice is an exploration of embodiment, vulnerability, identity and the fragile persistence of living matter. It is also an ongoing investigation into the act of seeing itself: what we choose to look at, what we refuse to see, and what becomes possible when we look again.

The faces of people encountered on the streets of New York reveal themselves to me within the depths of a universal theme—a form of beauty I have systematically termed "American Beauty." This concept possesses a peculiar, photogenic quality: it seems tangible at first glance, yet remains, in reality, indefinable.
I sought out faces that struck me as uniquely original and beautiful—faces that drew me in, that beckoned me. These are faces I discovered amidst the throng. It is a matter of signaling: if you aren't actively looking, the "signal" of a face—or a group of faces—simply passes you by. But when you are prepared—when your own internal signal is sharpened—you instantly recognize that a particular face is truly exceptional, and that it demands a response.

Consider the mouth, in close-up—an anatomical feature that carries its own distinct weight and significance. In the era of COVID-19, with mouths hidden behind masks, it became clear that this very part of the face is what most strongly defines our individuality—identifying us even more profoundly than our eyes.

The most important elements were the close-up, the square as a format, and the typology of the series.

So that they might see the similarities and differences in the shapes, forms, and structures of a part of the human body, within the context of nature as a whole.

I perceive a part of our face that fully expresses our personality, emotions, and experiences.

The body of a human, an animal, or a plant represents the same visual genotype—the same construction, identical shapes and forms. We are part of a larger whole.

Naturally, I was very pleased that my series had been noticed.

I am constantly exploring the organic nature and mysteries of the world that surrounds me.

Very interesting competition and community.