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Spróbuj opiewać okaleczony Å›wiat
Adama Zagajewskiego

Spróbuj opiewać okaleczony Å›wiat.
Pamiętaj o długich dniach czerwca
i o poziomkach, kroplach wina rosé.
O pokrzywach, które metodycznie zarastaÅ‚y
opuszczone domostwa wygnanych.
Musisz opiewać okaleczony świat
Patrzyłeś na eleganckie jachty i okręty;
jeden z nich miaÅ‚ przed sobÄ… dÅ‚ugÄ… podróż,
na inny czekała tylko słona nicość.
WidziaÅ‚eÅ› uchodźców, którzy szli donikÄ…d,
sÅ‚yszaÅ‚eÅ› oprawców, którzy radoÅ›nie Å›piewali.
Powinieneś opiewać okaleczony świat.
Pamiętaj o chwilach, kiedy byliście razem
w białym pokoju i firanka poruszyła się.
Wróć myÅ›lÄ… do koncertu, kiedy wybuchÅ‚a muzyka.
Jesienią zbierałeś żołędzie w parku
a liście wirowały nad bliznami ziemi.
Opiewaj okaleczony świat
i szare piórko, zgubione przez drozda,
i delikatne Å›wiatÅ‚o, które bÅ‚Ä…dzi i znika
i powraca.
 

O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
                         But O heart! heart! heart!
                            O the bleeding drops of red,
                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,
                                  Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
                         Here Captain! dear father!
                            This arm beneath your head!
                               It is some dream that on the deck,
                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
                            But I with mournful tread,
                               Walk the deck my Captain lies,
                                  Fallen cold and dead.
 

​

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

By Adam Zagajewski


 

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June’s long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,

you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

 

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

About This Project

     I shot these photos on Ilford HP5 film and my father’s old Nikon N6006 from the 90s. This is a photo essay inspired by John Berger and Jean Mohr’s imagined peasant woman in “Another Way of Telling”. Through describing the lives of my grandparents, a majority of whom passed away before I was born, I explored the boundaries of photography as both a form of art and an act of documenting, and if or when the line between the two should be drawn. 
     The portfolio begins with “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski in the original Polish and simple, documentary style photos of things passed down by my maternal grandparents. The midpoint is a photo of my grandmother’s empty rocking chair and “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman. This poem was included in a eulogy for my grandfather, the only grandparent I was able to meet and one of the last members of my family to pass down Polish as a first language. For the rest of the collection, I used the technique of double exposed film, which requires shooting a reel, winding it up, then shooting more pictures over the originals. The result is time stacked upon itself; a catalogue of what remains of my grandparents layered upon my own imagination of what our relationship might have been. The collection ends with the English translation of “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”.
     The original version of this portfolio was in-person, with the photos and poems printed and arranged horizontally. I did this so that the viewer may explore the narrative non-linearly. Of course, digitizing this collection changed the experience. In the online format, the photos are arranged vertically so that as the boundaries between time, generations, and the real and imagined collapse and intertwine, the viewer scrolls deeper down into the collection. Throughout this project, I struggled to explain the rhetoric behind it concisely; it tackles themes that are deeply personal, extremely broad, and difficult to wrangle into the constraints of written language. But as Berger says, the power of the photo comes from its ability to create another way of telling. To do that, the medium must be allowed to breathe, to relax into its own ambiguity, so that the viewer may approach the photo with their own background, insights, and conclusions.

    This is a story about sifting through family photo albums, about peeling back the layers of ourselves and finding all the love, loss, and time it took to build them. It’s about letting go and realizing that sometimes searching for answers begets more questions. Just as there is no satisfying translation between the language of photography and the written word, there is no satisfying way to capture the human experience.

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