"What's your favourite biscuit, Paul Gaffney and Michal Iwanowski?"

pictures above by Paul Gaffney and Michal Iwanowski

A few weeks back, Paul Gaffney invited me to be in conversation with him for his exhibition at ffotogallery in Penarth. I thought, "well I've never done this sort of thing before but sure why not". I thought there would be one man and his dog and a couple of grizzled landscape photographers, maybe a stray unwashed, documentary photography student who had wandered over from Newport. I thought of this and looked forward to asking questions like "What snacks did you eat on your walk, Paul? What's your favourite biscuit? If you were a biscuit, what biscuit would you be?"

But then I remembered that it was the Paul Gaffney whose first book was the fantastic "We Make the Path by Walking" and I thought, ah no, I can't do that, it might be quite busy. And then Paul told me that it was a double show and that Michal Iwanowski would be there showing his Clear of People - his retreading of his grandfather's 2,200 kilometre journey from a Russian Gulag to Poland back in 1945.

So it wasn't a quiet night. Despite the pissing rain and godawful traffic, it was standing room only. They had to lock people out. There were students there from the Photography for Fashion and Advertising, Photo Art and  MA courses at Newport,  and instead of the random stray unwashed documentary photography student, it was slick glamour all the way with Newport documentary students from Finland, Germany, Estonia, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Argentina, England, Ireland and Wales gracing the gallery with their elegant presence.

People had come specially to the show from Belgium (lovely to meet you Fabrice Wagner and more on that in a later post), Finland, Latvia and France and as well as the admirers of  Paul Gaffney, the local love for Michal Iwanowski was oh so apparent. He had a veritable fan club.

It was hopping and for good reason. The work was great and as people to be in conversation with, Paul and Michal were a delight and eased my nerves and talked so eloquently and deeply about their work that I never got to ask what kind of of biscuit they would be. The only problem was it was so busy that some people at the back had difficulties hearing.

Instead they talked about their work; the exhibiton was two landscape shows but they were very different. Gaffney's was about forgetting and becoming one with the landscape and Iwanowski was about remembering (and becoming one with the landscape). Where Gaffney's work was light and populated by unseen spirits, Iwanowski's was dark and what life was there was to be avoided. It was a landscape history that was informed by the past and all the more evocative for that.

Iwanowski is looking for people to tell him the war stories they know and that is something that resonates, so much so that I found myself in conversation with 4 people whose second world war family histories almost summed up the entire Eastern Front; of the four, Iwanowski had his grandfather who had walked across the Soviet Union, one had a father who had escaped from Auschwitz, one had a father who had been in the SS and one had an uncle who had fought at Stalingrad. In Penarth! Unbelievable!

Both Gaffney and Iwanowski talked about their books. Iwanowski's is in the planning stage, but Gaffney's is the finished article and sold out. It was fascinating to hear about Gaffney made, promoted and sold the book, an object lesson in the hard work and lightness of touch that is required on top of the great work.

It was even more fascinating to see the love people have for his work.  I'm not sure what it is that strikes such a chord with people. Partly it s the title, partly it is the fluency with which Gaffney talks about his work, but most of all it is the directness of the work with its crossroads, split paths, dead ends and resting places. People are sucked right into it. It's honest and recognisable and direct, but with a philosophical and spiritual edge.

Earlier in the week, I posted on Martin Parr and his view that photography has never been healthier. Last night was evidence of that. Feel Good Photography that has a specific approach and vision and depth! Long may it continue.


See the show here. 

Paul Gaffney/Michal Iwanowski

Untitled #25, from We Make the Path by Walking, 2012 © Paul Gaffney

7 February – 8 March 2014
Ffotogallery presents two solo exhibitions by Paul Gaffney and Michal Iwanowski. Both artists make work of an exploratory nature, during long and physically demanding walks far from the comforts of home to reflect on ideas of landscape, meditation and memory.

Paul Gaffney
We Make the Path by Walking

Made over several journeys across southern Europe, Gaffney’s landscape photographs chronicle over two thousand miles of terrain, all negotiated on foot. We Make the Path by Walking immerses the viewer in a series of untraceable landscapes that appear at the same time undisturbed yet excavated. These quiet and subtle images consider the notion of long distance walking as a form of meditation and personal transformation.

Paul Gaffney (b. 1979) is an Irish artist who is currently undertaking a practice-based PHD in photography at the University of Ulster in Belfast. He has been nominated for various international awards including the European Publishers Award for Photography.

Exhibition supported by Culture Ireland.

Skinny Mothers, from Clear of People, 2013 © Michal Iwanowski

Michal Iwanowski
Clear of People

Michal Iwanowski’s work retraces an epic journey his grandfather and great uncle made in 1945 after escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, and in extreme hardship walked 2000 km to Poland in search of their family.
Clear of People documents this journey. The images and writing capture Iwanowski’s own travels through landscape marked by history as well as echoing his grandfather’s experience of a quest for safety in a hostile environment.

Michal Iwanowski is a Polish born, Cardiff based, artists who currently teaches at Ffotogallery. His work explores the relationship between landscape and memory.

Project supported by the Arts Council of Wales

In Conversation with Michal Iwanowski and Paul Gaffney

Untitled #25, from We Make the Path by Walking, 2012 © Paul Gaffney I'm looking forward to being n conversation Michal Iwanowski and Paul Gaffney (both of whom are much better at talking that I) tomorrow at Ffotogallery in Penarth and seeing a few friends, old and never yet met. Here's the blurb. Ffotogallery is delighted to present two solo exhibitions by Paul Gaffney and Michal Iwanowski. Both artists make work of an exploratory nature, during long and physically demanding walks far from the comforts of home to reflect on ideas of landscape, meditation and memory. Both Gaffney and Iwanowski will be talking about their work at our Artist Talk on Thursday 6 February at 6pm, followed by the exhibition previews from 7-8.30pm. Entry is free of charge.   Made over several journeys across southern Europe, Paul Gaffney’s landscape photographs chronicle over two thousand miles of terrain, all negotiated on foot. We Make the Path by Walking immerses the viewer in a series of untraceable landscapes that appear at the same time undisturbed yet excavated. These quiet and subtle images consider the notion of long distance walking as a form of meditation and personal transformation. Michal Iwanowski’s work retraces an epic journey his grandfather and great uncle made in 1945 after escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, and in extreme hardship walked 2000 km to Poland in search of their family. Clear of People documents this journey. The images and writing capture Iwanowski’s own travels through landscape marked by history as well as echoing his grandfather’s experience of a quest for safety in a hostile environment. Exhibition continues until 8 March 2014. For more information see our website. Ffotogallery's exhibition programme is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

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Belarus, Nazis and Psalm 82/2

pictures above from 82, published by AMC

Martin Toft wrote about walking to war earlier this week which connected to Michal Iwanowski's recreating the walk his grandfather did at the end of the Second World War; a walk that went through Russia, Belarus and Lithuania before he reached his devastated homeland of Poland.

Mention Belarus and it automatically makes me think of the Greatest War Film Ever Made (GWFEM), Come and See. I wrote about Come and See here, it's a brutal tale of a young partisan's walk through the murder and devastation of a country where the policy of extermination went on beyond the camps.




Janina Struk writes about what happened in Belarus (and beyond) in her excellent book, Private Pictures, Soldiers' Inside View of War. She talks about the post-war erasing of memory, the simplification and shrinkage of events into the Holocaust and what happened in the camps and the way in which large parts of the Wehrmacht were absolved from all responsibility as though war crimes only happened in the camps and nowhere else.

This was a result of the Nuremberg war trials. Once the leading Nazis were imprisoned. writes Struk, '...a clear distinction was made between crimes committed by the Nazis and the millions of soldiers who had fought an 'honourable' war. Historian Omar Bartov wrote: 'If the initial purpose (of the tribunals) had been to punish and purge, the ultimate result was to acquit and cover up.''

Struk also writes about the War of Extermination exhibition that toured Germany in the late 1990s and  challenged the myth of the honourable war fought by the regular Wehrmacht soldier and how this shook people out of their comfort zones.

Interestingly, Struk extends the argument and describes how these images could be seen as a wider narrative on war and the use of images, that abuse extends into different wars and conflicts and images such as the Abu Ghraib pictures of 2004 share a family resemblance to those of Jews being persecuted in Europe in the 1940s ( and here's a video of anti-semitism in contemporary France).

She also notes that the reaction of the American authorities to the Abu Ghraib pictures - to prosecute those who took and posed in the photographs, was not so different to the reaction of the Nazi authorities to those who took pictures of atrocities in the Second World War: she mentions the case of  Max Täubner, an SS officer who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in 1943 not for killing Jews, but for photographing their deaths.

The pictures that Täubner took could have appeared in the two volume set  82, published by AMC.

The book is in two parts, both of which feature the private pictures that Struk writes about, the pictures of people directly involved in the events portrayed. 82/1 looks at the material loss of the war; burned out houses and crashed planes. 82/2 looks at the human loss of the war, the humiliations and atrocities, the death, the imprisonment, the violence waiting to be unleashed. Sometimes, the people portrayed (most often Eastern Europeans, Russians or Jews) are shown smiling or giving Nazi salutes

The backs of the pictures are also included (as with Melinda Gibson's great book - it just keeps on getting better and better) so giving the pictures a sense of location.

82 is edited by David Thomson and presents the pictures as they are. The backs of the pictures aside, there is no text so you have to draw your own conclusions and make your own narrative. And as Struk shows, maybe that's not as simple as might first appear.

And the title of the book. There are a couple of psalms, the second of which in particular connects to both the images and the idea that the complexities of war cannot be reduced to polarities of Good and Evil, Wehrmacht and SS, Allies and Axis, West and East.

So maybe the message of the book, and it's volume titles, is not to isolate and demonise what is so obviously evil, but instead to look into our own hearts and question our own behaviour.

A few years back, you would always see banners at World Cup matches reading John 3:16 which refers to eternal life and Jesus. Which is a bit religious for my liking. 82/2 is good for anyone/anywhere. anywhere.


Psalm 82/1: 

God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the “gods”

Psalm 82/2

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?  Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;  maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

Photography and Walking: Do they Go Together

all pictures by Michal Iwanowski


I'm looking forward to the exhibition at Fotogallery in Penarth of the work of Paul Gaffney and Michal Iwanoowski.

Both combine extreme walking with photography. I've featured Gaffney on this blog before for his book We Make the Path By Walking, a project where walking becomes a meditative retreat from the world - a retreat that is at times complicated by photography as Gaffney recognises in this excerpt form this interview.


Over the course of the year, I noticed that my mind was usually preoccupied while walking, and I often found it difficult to remain aware of the present moment for any decent length of time. I also found that the act of photography was often counter-productive to my goal of capturing the sense of experience of the landscape, which often led to a sense of frustration. For example, if you’re walking in quite a relaxed state and you feel drawn to stop to look at something, you can quickly snap out of that moment when the camera comes out and you begin to try to figure out how to compose and frame the picture. 

Also on show is Michal Iwanowski's Clear of People, which is also based on walking and is also a retreat in many ways. This time the retreat is a temporal one. Iwanowski rewalks the path taken by his grandfather and his grandfather's brother in 1945, a path that went across rural Russia, Belarus and Poland. Along the way, they avoided populated areas, sticking to the forests and meadows of the devastated countryside.

Iwanowski walked the same path and lost himself in the landscape and the sky. Time lost meaning and he found 2013 and 1945 become one. He was together with his family as they suffered their way home. This is Iwanowski he says on his website

In 1945, my grandfather and his brother escaped from a war prison in Kaluga, Russia, and crossed over 2,200km on their way to Poland, where they were reunited with their family. 

As fugitives - the walked only at night, and avoided contact with people at all cost. Surviving on berries, mushroom and occasionally stolen potatoes or a cabbage, they endured extreme hardship and weather adversity.   

Yet throughout the journey, their determination and their brotherly bond kept them alive and kept them going.


In the summer of 2013, I retraced their epic journey and documented it from the perspective of a fugitive - staying Clear Of People. The journey took me from Kaluga, Russia, across Belarus, Lithuania, to Wroclaw, Poland, where my gradfather had found home and lived to be 92. His younger brother is still alive, and lives in Szczecin, Poland. 

The show at Fotogallery preivews on Thursday February 6th and I will be in conversation with both Michal and Paul on the evening, which is something I'm very much looking forward to.