Coming out of many years of depression, I began to reflect on what factors, events in my life had the greatest impact on me, constituting my personality. I chose the form of self-analysis which is closest to me.

Using selected photographs from a period of several years, I created a kind of notebook which is an allegory of me, my personality and my identity.

Close your eyes.

Imagine a world filled with love, disappointment, drugs, responsibility, travel, alcohol, sex, romance, wealth, poverty defeatism, dreams, hedonism, abstraction, depression, doubt.

Open your eyes.

See the photographs of Dash Snow. Ask yourself if what you were thinking about is really the most intense thing you could imagine.

Close your eyes again.

Think about the fact that you were born to dream. That all you dream about is love beautiful, passionate.

Full of conscious sexuality.

Unfulfilled.

Read the poems of Walt Whitman.

Could you say the same about the love of your dreams?

Close your eyes.

Imagine that your life is made up of chapters and you have seven lives.

And in each you are someone else

You have drunk hectolitres of vodka.

You’ve mixed all the chemicals.

You’ve swallowed, snorted, rubbed in, inhaled.

You’ve had countless mistresses.

You have spent several years of your life on the road.

You regret nothing.

You have made dreams come true.

Your lungs are filled with a grey puff of smoke from the cigarettes you have smoked.

You are full, you miss nothing.

You live the image of a woman who you feel is the most wonderful, and the only one.

And you press this image into every lover you meet, waiting for her to be transformed by this pressing.

Into this ideal with a tough character that you will be able to take care of.

Years will pass, and with them faces and bodies.

And One thing will remain unchanged all will be the same as from your imagination.

And what will hurt the most will be the departing dreams of imaginations.

Jakub Stanek born in 1988, is a photographer and visual artist, specialising mainly in photography, video films and installations. He studied photography at the Academy of Photography and at the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic. In 2015 he was recognised as one of the 50 most talented young photographers. In recent years he has focused on documentary projects that tell of the complex relationships between people and their surroundings. His works explore the influence of the past on the shaping of his protagonists' personalities, trying to fathom how history affects human identity.

He is the author of books such as "The Man Without Past", "Trip to Mars" and "Notebook". His work has been shown, among other places, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in China, at the Format 21 Festival in Derby and during Photomonth in Kraków...

The opening of the exhibition 24 November, 18:00

24.11-10.12.2023

Wednesday-Friday 16-20
Saturday-Sunday 12-20

You are welcome! FPW team

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