Joanna Nowicka shoots black and white portraits in Katowice, and people arrive at her studio with a fixed idea of how they look.
Usually a harsh one. Over the years she heard so much criticism that people direct at themselves that she started running separate workshops on the subject. The portrait turned out to be a diagnostic instrument as well as a picture. It shows the face, and it also shows what the person has already talked themselves into believing about that face.
We wrote to her because black and white photography strips appearance of everything that is easiest to sell.
Colour goes, gloss goes, and what remains is shape, texture and the look in the eyes. That is essentially an experiment on the question we care about most: what is left of appearance once you remove the decoration. And since Joanna Nowicka, by her own account, simply does not feel colour, her images read as monochrome even when they are shot in colour.
Below is her own account, lightly edited, in her words.
She answered at length, and the most interesting thread may be how consistently she pushes away the word pretty. Not out of contrariness, but because in her work the word describes nothing.
You shoot black and white portraits. What disappears from a face along with colour, and what only becomes visible then?
Let me start by saying that I simply do not feel colour, I do not see it. And even when I shoot in colour, my photographs are often monochrome in how they read. What I do love is moving through the greyscale, through tonalities whose intensity or softness underline what fascinates me in a face: shapes, textures, and the look in the eyes.
I like that range between deep blacks, shadow, and the lit areas where white dominates. The absence of colour lets me concentrate not only on the surface, but also, and perhaps mainly, on what is inside, what lies deeper.
I do not need ornaments, because the human face and eyes are fascinating enough and varied enough in the richness of their variants. That severity of the monochrome image lets me notice and feel more, nothing pulls my attention away from the point, which is the person standing in front of me.
People come to a session with a fixed idea of how they look. How often does it diverge from the photograph, and what happens in the studio then?
I run workshops on self acceptance, on how we see ourselves and what shapes that. It came out of many meetings in my studio and out of observing the enormous, painful criticism that people direct at themselves.
I would draw a small distinction here. When I invite someone to sit for one of my own projects, there are far fewer preconceptions, and therefore far fewer expectations. The person knows only the outline of the vision, a direction. Fortunately people trust me and put themselves in my hands and my camera. Later, when they see the finished portrait, they are sometimes surprised by what I noticed in them. They understand that the image is filtered through my sensitivity and my fascinations. And that is what I try to give the person I photograph, my absolute delight in them.
Commissioned portraits are a little different. They are often images people use professionally, so there are always specific expectations and needs. I care a great deal about my guests being comfortable in the studio and about us understanding each other. We look at what we are doing and we discuss it as we go.
If I meet someone who has real difficulty accepting how they look, I weave elements of the workshop into the session. I explain what shapes the way we perceive ourselves, trying to shift the weight from the grievances people hold against themselves onto the mechanisms, the filters we see ourselves through and are often not even aware of.
Yes, sometimes the assessments of a portrait are wildly different, and I have the impression we are looking at two entirely different photographs. I understand where that comes from and I do not fight it. I am confident in my skills and my talent, and at the same time I respect the fact that dissatisfaction with one’s own appearance can hide many difficult stories. Even so, we usually arrive at portraits the client accepts.
There is a moment in a session when a person stops posing. How do you recognise it?
Each of us has that moment at a different time. As a rule, with few exceptions, the beginning of a session is stiff. That is why I try to start the session much earlier. The first contact, a phone call, can break the ice and make the relationship less formal. That helps a lot later. When the person arrives at the studio, they feel as if they already know me. We start with coffee and conversation.
And then, during the session, there is a moment, a kind of click. I see it in the body, the tension lets go, the body becomes freer, and you can see it literally in the details of how it is arranged.
Getting to that point is also helped by a sense of humour, by understanding someone’s awkwardness, and by building a safe atmosphere in the studio.
How does a face that works in a photograph differ from a face we would call pretty in real life?
I understand attractiveness apart from trends and fashions for this or that. Those criteria do not interest me at all, and I actually consider them socially harmful.
The word pretty feels somehow thin to me. It is like the word nice. It means everything and nothing.
What makes someone catch my eye and my interest is that unique mixture of individual external features and what comes from inside that person. Personality translates into how we carry and present ourselves, character arranges itself in expressions and gestures.
You can have many ideas about a single face, you can show it photographically in many ways. What interests me most is showing in the portrait what draws me to that person in real life. So I try to translate that into an image, to place the accent there, to give expression to my fascination. And everyone would probably do it differently, because we all look at the people around us differently.
A scar, a wrinkle, an asymmetry. When do they help a portrait and when do they get in the way?
To me they are an integral part of the story about a person. Asymmetry, for example, is absolutely natural. Our two halves differ from each other, not only in appearance but also in ability, as anyone who practises yoga knows well. People have trouble with the asymmetry of their own face, I observe it. What is interesting is that they notice it in themselves and usually do not see it in others, they do not pay attention to it.
A scar, a wrinkle, an asymmetry add plasticity, they speak of contexts, of what someone has lived through. In a project that ran for years I photographed women who had been through cancer, showing their scars and their shaved heads. So it is also a question of how much of the truth about themselves the sitter wants to reveal.
And what about the other side? When someone photographs you, is it easier or harder than for the average client?
I am clever enough to take most of my photographs myself. And I do not mean selfies, I mean portraits made in the studio for my professional life. But maybe it is time to check how it goes with someone else.
Above all I know what body language is, so if my picture is meant to carry a message, to appear in a particular context, I approach it consciously.
Of course there is also a whole mass of more accidental pictures taken in private contexts, and there anything can happen. I do not always like them, but I try not to attach much weight to that.
You work in Katowice. Do people here approach being photographed differently?
I do not know whether place matters, if I were to compare with other Polish cities. My studio is in Katowice, but people come to me from outside Silesia as well, I travel further at times, and I have made portraits outside Poland too. I probably have too little data to put forward a thesis.
Other questions do come up, though. Is the chronic lack of acceptance of one’s own appearance a Polish trait? Is there more acceptance somewhere else, among other nationalities?
Do you remember a photograph after which someone saw themselves differently? What was actually in it?
I will generalise a little, meaning I will not point to a specific photograph but rather to the impressions people sometimes share.
When I perceive someone through my own delight, my fascination, those emotions are apparently strong enough that I somehow contain them in the portrait, and the person photographed can find them there. I also hear that I manage to capture traits of character, of personality, even subtleties of the soul, which can surprise the sitter. They say things like: I did not know I was like this, or I had no idea how much strength there is in me.
If my portraits can make unsupportive beliefs lose their force and their meaning, if I can plant a micro seed of acceptance and gentleness towards oneself, then this photography of mine has some deeper sense.
Three things worth taking from this conversation.
First, attractiveness and prettiness are two different things, and someone who looks at faces professionally sets the second word aside as useless. Second, we see asymmetry only in ourselves, which is fairly strong evidence that the scale we apply to our own appearance has nothing in common with the scale the rest of the world applies to us. Third, appearance is not superficial: a scar, a wrinkle and an irregularity tell more about a person than smoothness, and a portrait can disarm a belief someone has carried for years.
Joanna Nowicka runs a portrait studio in Katowice and works with self acceptance in workshop form: instagram.com/joanna_nowicka_fotografia