Just breathe. Just don’t think how little pollinators is flying around with all that juicy cherry tree blossom around Edinburgh.

Fat Thursday must be my favourite holiday of the Polish calendar. We’re very lucky because an excellent Polish bakery is just a street away from our studio in Leith and today Mario Patisserie provided us with the fluffy, delicate, rose-jam filled goods:

I’ve just spotted a great grant funding for artists, makers and designers from @hugobfoundation.bsky.social They don’t have many posts here so go directly to their website/IG to check the deadlines. Looks very promising - like what the design/making/arting community would need exactly:

Having a photography studio right next to a picturesque pool of water makes leaving it late on a Sunday in January after a long day of prep for a Monday shoot, somehow more pleasureable. Hence my iPhone snap of the view from The Shore in Leith:

Heavy day editing, I’m looking forward to being this horizontal position a la this wee dachshund:

Not making any new year resolutions (not that I ever have!) Some things need to remain private especially in times like 2025.

Had a wholesome Christmas Eve and Day entertaining mu mum who is visiting from Poland and a smol dachshund that was visiting from friends. We’ve also heard from babushka so hoping for some more joy and the light at the end of a tunnel! I hope your Xmas is going smoothly and tastily too! Studio card:

I'm delighted to be part of this group show from Studies in Photography with a print from my animal collage series 'Metamorphoses'. Do pop in THIS SATURDAY to 6 William Street in Edinburgh West End.

The exhibition opens 6 - 22 Dec
Tuesday - Sunday 12 noon - 6 pm

The older I get the more I’m thinking about the approach of the inevitable (especially during a dark Scottish November) but hey, I’m not there yet so I might as well explore all the scenarios creatively. From birth till death - do you believe there is something after we’re gone? A wee sketch for you

Did you know that Joseph Heller (the one of the Paragraph 22 fame) wrote a book on Rembrandt and Aristotle? I read ‘Picture this’ years ago in a Polish translation and now rediscovering it from my local library in Leith. So Rembrandt went bankrupt at 47. But he created his best work after that.

Eating my lunch at the studio while being watched by a smol dachshund. Your dog’s cutness causes hiccups @wojtekkutyla.bsky.social

In my personal work I mainly cooperate with people I know well, there is enough stress in life already! Here is my Japanese friend and a very talented illustrator Ryo Tamura whose portrait taken in my former studio at Edinburgh’s Summerhall is part of one of the ‘Lethe’ collages:

‘Imagination plotters’ is the name Agnieszka Taborska gives to surrealists (mind you, her idea comes from a Jan Svankmajer’s film). One of the best and most comprehensive resources on this approach to life and art that is surrealism. The trend is officially 100 years old (as of October 2024).

I'm delighted that one of my images from ‘Lethe’ is part of a touring group exhibition
'Dialogues on Humanity. So far the exhibition has travelled to Tanzania, Mexico, Chile, Amman, Sri Lanka and Poland.
@swissdevcoop
@photo.elysee
@icrc.bsky.social

#photographyexhibition #collage #memory #lethe

Olga Boznanska is a Polish portrait painter for whose work I always make a beeline in any art collection. She was a great lover of animals (she kept pet mice in her Parisian studio) and a brilliant, talented painter. The latest research shows she was abused as a child.

Polish tower blocks fascinate me. I did live in a four storey one when I was a child but many of my friends lived in these high cubes with their parents. University professors mingled with welders. Classless Poland is a myth now but it was an interesting social experiment when it lasted.

The best thing about being bilingual is that I’m able to read books that will NEVER be translated into English. Like this biography of the Polish-French director Andrzej Zulawski. A fascinating story of an extremely talented but a difficult man and a singularly Polish story of an émigré.