Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski
Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski (Oosterhout, The Netherlands, 23 April 1949) is a Dutch photographer. Ever since his student years he has been travelling all over the world in search for pitoresque locations for his autonomous-conceptual photographs, of special people or situations for his social-documentary projects. At the beginning of his career he became famous with his photo-sequences, which were exhibited frequently since the early seventies. Besides many exhibitions in the last forty years, Szulc-Krzyzanowski made sixteen photo books and his pictures were published in magazines and newspapers all over the world. People are always the central theme in his pictures. Sometimes it is his own shadow or footstep that is the issue in the picture, like in many of his sequences, and sometimes it is an other person somewhere on this planet, but he always approaches his subject with a good sense of curiousity and with a positive perspective. Nowadays Szulc-Krzyzanowski lives and workes, most of the time, in Mexico, in his own designed camper, the "Fuso Szulc", with his focus on his social-documentary projects.
Childhood
Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski was born in 1949 in Oosterhout, The Netherlands. His father, Zbigniew Szulc-Krzyzanowski, was an engineer from Poland. During the Second World War he was a tank commander in The Netherlands, where he stayed and married Clotilde Laurijssen in 1946. In that same year they builded a house in Oosterhout. Here they raised their four children. The situation at home, which was far from peaceful, was crucial for Szulc-Krzyzanowski's personal growth and education. There were a lot of tensions between Szulc-Krzyzanowski's parents. His father didn't had much knowledge of the Dutch language, and his wife and children didn't speak Polish. There were also some cultural differrence between his parents. These problems were unbridgeable. Besides that, his father was effected by the war; the horrible experiences made his a unpredictable man with unexpactable emotions. He was, however, a active father for his children. As he was a enthusiastic photographer, he gave Szulc-Krzyzanowski his first camera. A year later, Szulc-Krzyzanowski was then seven years old, his father left his family for the first time. He would come back and leave again two times more.
After elementary school, Szulc-Krzyzanowski became a fickle child. After a year of MULO in Oosterhout he went to a boarding school, named De Westerhelling in Nijmegen. Here he became a member of the photo club and learned how to make photo-prints. He became friends with fellow students who were also interested in photography. One of them was Teun Hocks. Hocks became a successful artist and stayed friends with Szulc-Krzyzanowski all these years. Life on the boarding school didn't suited Szulc-Krzyzanowski, and after two years, in which several conflicts had taken place, he was removed. He returned to the MULO in Oosterhout. The head of the MULO, Charles Krijnen, knew the family-situation of Szulc-Krzyzanowski and made it possible for him to study with freedom. In example, he could work on the school paper during classes. The illustrations for this paper were made by Hocks, who was a student at the St. Joost Academy of Arts in Breda at that time. In 1966 Szulc-Krzyzanowski won the first price in a photo contest, organized by his school. A year later he graduated as one of the best students of his year. He then became a photography student at the same Academy of Arts in Breda, but because he refused to follow the lessons on optics and chemistry, he got removed after one year. In the rest of that year, 1968, he did some small photographic assignments and hitchhiked with Hocks trough France. After his registration and admission at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in ’s-Hertogenbosch, he moved to this city and began living on his own. The first months of his study, he worked at the graphic department with the teachers Dick Cassée and Rob Otten, where he learned the art of etching. Later he photographed under supervision of Wim Noordhoek, which made him stop etching. He concentrated completely on photography from then one. In 1969 he made a photography journey for two months in the Czech Republic and Poland, and on the 25th of May, 1970, he graduated at the Royal Academy of Art and Design. The now 21 year old Szulc-Krzyzanowski began his carreer as a artistic-conceptual photographer.
Artistic-conceptual photography
In the beginning of his carreer, Szulc Krzyzanowski got world-known with his photo-sequences. The concept of the photo-sequence by Szulc Krzyzanowski was formed in 1971, on the small Dutch island Schiermonnikoog. Here Szulc Krzyzanowski stayed in a calves stable at a local farm. The Department of Environment and Ecology had given him permission to take photographs within a closed and protected bird-brooding area. His first sequences were a succession of pictures showing a remarkable visual happening. Szulc Krzyzanowski came to this kind of narrative photography during a walk on the island. The horizon showed an object which he could not identify. By walking to the object it would become clear what is was. He recorded this process of slow discovery by making a picture every ± 10 meters. A new step in his photographic development was made. These first sequences were displayed later that year in the Noord-Brabants Museum in s’-Hertogenbosch. In this period, Szulc-Kryzanowski also became a member of the Dutch Association of Photographers, the GKF (in Dutch: de Beroepsvereniging van fotografen).
In September 1972, Szulc-Kryzanowski received a grant by the Dutch Department of Culture, Recreation and Social Work. From this money, he bought his first car, a Citroën Ami Break, which he used to make a photographic journey to Portugal with fellow-artist Jan Hendrix. It was a tumultuous period for Szulc-Kryzanowski. He had an exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and an exhibition of his project “Camden Interiors” and of the sequences in the Camden Arts Centre in Londen, which was also his first exhibition abroad. The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris bought 20 pictures in that same year, and what followed was a non-stop period of exhibitions and publications in The Netherlands and abroad, while Szulc-Krzyzanowski was working on different projects.
Since 1968 Szulc-Krzyzanowski frequently visited Paris, where he became friends with the film maker Bernard Martino. Because Szulc-Krzyzanowski always brought his recent pictures with him, his work got known by people like Jean-Claude Lemagny of the Bibliothèque Nationale. What followed was a big publication of his portfolio (20 pages) in the French magazine ZOOM. In Paris Szulc-Krzyzanowski also met Virginia Zabriskie and Nicholas Callaway of the Zabriskie Gallery in New York, and Harry Lunn, an important photo-dealer at that time from Washington. Through these new contacts, Szulc-Krzyzanowski got well-known in the American art scene. Lunn bought several of his sequences and in July 1978, Szulc-Krzyzanowski signed a contract with the Zabriskie Gallery in New York and Paris, which gave them exclusive rights of representing the works of Szulc-Krzyzanowski and they became his vast commercial agents. New York became his hometown. He bought a camper and traveled for months to several locations where he would make his sequences. During the winter of 1979-1980, Szulc-Krzyzanowski found the perfect circumstances for new sequences in Mexico. Later he would also make several VISTA-pictures here. He returned to the west-coast of Mexico many times, where he worked in total desolation on his sequences.
A large photo-book with the sequences of Szulc-Krzyzanowski was published in March 1984. The introduction was written by David Travis, the Conservator of Photography of the Art Institute in Chicago, where also a big solo exhibition of his sequences was established. The book resulted, among others, in a solo-exhibition in the Arnhems Gemeentemuseum and in the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York. In this period, Szulc-Krzyzanowski felt like he made all possible sequences and in making more sequences, only repetition and variation could follow. Also the several attempts of influence on his work by his American Gallery, as Szulc-Krzyzanowski says he experienced this, felt as an obstacle for his creative development. With a big farewell-exhibition in the Olympus Gallery in Amsterdam, he officially stopped with his sequences on the 30th of July in 1985. He also adjourned the business agreements with his galleries. He sold his camper and stopped with the long working periods in Mexico.
Social-documentary
Szulc-Krzyzanowski always worked on various kinds of photography projects. Because of his social concerns and his interest in other people, many of these project were (and are) social-documentary. One of the first social-documentary projects was an project which took place in Arles, France, and was initiated on invitation by Lucien Clergue in 1974. Szulc-Krzyzanowski photographed different families in their living room. This pictures were shown on the Photo Festival of Arles.
“Neem nou Henny” (the translation in English could be Henny, for example), Szulc-Krzyzanowski's first photo-book, was published in 1977. This book shows the life of an ordinary Dutch girl, working on the moving-band conveyor in a cookie-factory. Szulc-Krzyzanowski kept on visiting Henny and in 1983 he published the photo-book "Henny, een vrouw" (Henny, a woman). In March 1988 the third book on Henny was launched: “Henny, 10 jaar uit haar leven” (Henny, ten years of her life). 5 years later Szulc-Krzyzanowski published “Henny, een nieuw leven” (Henny, a new life). The first copy of this book was giving to Henny by Hedy d’Ancona, at that time a Dutch Minister, during the exhibition of photo's of Henny in the Amsterdam Historical Museum. Henny was also interviewed by Sonja Barend, a famous Dutch TV-host. On the 17th of November 2001, the opening of the exhibition "Henny zelf" (Henny herself) and the presentation of the homonym book took place in Gallery De Melkweg in Amsterdam. With this book, Szulc-Krzyzanowski documented 24 years of Henny's life. Again Henny received a lot of attention by the media; she was the subject of several interviews, publications in different magazines and in the newspapers, and a portfolio publication appeared in Vrij Nederland, a well-known Dutch magazine.
From 1978 till 1984 Szulc-Krzyzanowski made several photo-documentaries for Nieuwe Revu outside The Netherlands, like the life in the Jewish settlement Ofra, located in the occupied territories at the West Bank. Other subjects were the profiteers of the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chili, the Sharia as applied in Soedan, and witnesses on the political actions in Indonesia. In line with his social character, Szulc-Krzyzanowski spent some time in the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona, India, where he studied Tantra Yoga and the thoughts of Osho.
During the winter of 1992-1993 Szulc-Krzyzanowski was working and living in the mission post Elim Mission in the North-East of Zimbabwe. Because of long term drought, this area had a famine. Szulc-Krzyzanowski financed a rescue campaign of the English doctor Roger Drew, from money he collected in The Netherlands. For 3 months he drove through these affected ares to give food to the starving people. Besides that he worked on a photo project on the famine and one on AIDS. Because of the terrible things he saw, during the famine and because of his project on AIDS in Tanzania, Szulc-Krzyzanowski got depressed in the fall of 1993. The project "World of Love" (in Dutch “Wereld van liefde”) was a way to get over this depression. Different families were photographed on 4 locations in the world, with the purpose to show how people care about or love each other and take care of each other. Szulc-Krzyzanowski lived, for this project, in a small village in the Sahara desert in Senegal, and photographed the love and caring within the Wolof-family. He organised "World of Love" with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, and they invited 3 other photographers to participate in this project: Koen Wessing in Colombia, Corinne Noordenbosch in Nederland en Catrien Ariëns in Bangladesh. "World of Love" was presented on the 6th of October in 1994 in the Tropenmuseum. Pictures of this project were published in Vrij Nederland, Marie-Claire and Foto and "World of Love" got an own program on national television.
Until 1985 Szulc-Krzyzanowski lived abroad most of the time, staying with friends or in cheap hotels. In September 1985 he decided to stay in The Netherlands and he bought a house in Amsterdam. In his studio he made several portraits of well-known Dutchmen, on which you couldn't see their faces. These portraits were exhibited on different locations in The Netherlands and published on more than one occasion, and in 1986 Szulc-Krzyzanowski won the Zilveren Camera, an important Dutch Photographers price. For more than a year he made a portrait of a Dutch artist who recently appeared in the news, in commission of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. In March 1995 Szulc-Krzyzanowski won the Zilveren Camera price again, now for his project "World of Love".
The Nomad Way of Living
Right after his graduation at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in s’-Hertogenbosch, Szulc-Kryzanowski stayed in the south of Europe or Marocco, especially during winters. Here he made, besides his famous sequences, also landscape photo's, stock-photo's and portraits. The first years of traveling were done on a low budget. Szulc-Kryzanowski often stayed at cheap rented rooms. After that he traveled more often with a car and a tent. In 1977 he bought his first camper, a Mercedes 306D Westfalia, where he could live for months while he was on a working spot. When in 1989 Szulc-Krzyzanowski and his partner, the journalist Angeline van den Berg, broke up after 17 years, he went to Salvador Dali's village Cadaques to stay there for a year and find some peace of mind. When he returned in The Netherlands in 1990 he kept on traveling a lot; right after his return he went to Malawi and Mozambique for a reportage on refugees for the Dutch magazine Panorama. After this trip, in 1991, he left The Netherlands again. Together with litterateur Michiel van Kempen he visited Suriname where he stayed for four months to work on the photo-book “Woorden die diep wortelen”. For this book he visited the rebelling Tucayana-Indians. After a turbulent journey with journalist Adelheid Kapteyn in Guyana, South-America, Szulc-Krzyzanowski came back to The Netherlands in June 1992. Here he began working on a new "Henny-book". Short time after his arrival, the book “Woorden die diep wortelen” was published in The Netherlands.
References
External links
- Official website
- Blog Michel Szulc-Krzyzanowski
- Website The Most Beautiful People in the World
- Website How the World Loves Us
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