Pumping Iron (working title)
Photography
2021 - ongoing
Pumping Iron is a project inspired by found archival images of the bodybuilders from the 70s.
It consists of a series of images taken by bodybuilders-participants, who are asked to photograph themselves without being given any direction from the photographer. A point of departure for this project was the ubiquity of the gaze - namely those of participants of male bodybuilding shows, as much as of their fans. I’ve decided to create a situation, where the context of a competitive bodybuilding “show” is being erased - what we’re presented with is a self-portrait with no particular goal in mind. The gaze is frozen in uncertainty. The situation created in the plain white background studio being escapes the competetive logic associated with bodybuilding, for which the rivalry takes a place on a podium. The use of a large format camera points at the links between historical methods of photography, and the creation of a masculine self-image.
Works in progress.
Untitled (Kamil), 2021
Untitled (Michał), 2021
Untitled (Denis), 2022