Łukasz Andrzejewski photographs people in black and white, in Opole, and books two or three hours for a single sitting.
Not because taking the pictures takes that long. Because that is how long it takes for somebody to stop remembering that they are standing in front of a lens. Everything else, the light, the background, the frame, is preparation for that one thing.
We wrote to him because a black and white portrait strips away almost everything that usually passes for appearance.
Colour goes. Makeup stops mattering. Clothing recedes. What is left is a face, some light, and whatever the person brought with them. That is a good place to ask what is actually visible once you subtract the rest.
What follows is his own account, lightly edited, in his words.
The strongest moment is a single sentence about pop culture, after which it is hard to keep believing that "I photograph badly" is an opinion about how we look.
Black and white removes colour, makeup stops mattering, what is left is a face and light. What surfaces then that colour does not show?
By taking colour away we can look at the photographed person more deeply. Expression, shadow and the texture of skin become more visible, without interference. Colour often pulls attention away from the subject.
Emotion and simplicity. Simplicity is easy to say and hard to do. What specifically do you have to remove from the frame, or from the situation, to get it?
I look for places and backgrounds that will complete the portrait. Places where the person comes first. I usually avoid brickwork and gateways, or any other element that pulls the eye. The person is the most important thing.
Almost everybody claims they photograph badly. In your view, is that the truth about how they look, or about something else entirely?
People struggle with insecurities, regardless of age. Nor does pop culture help, having promoted slim young people with smooth faces for a very long time. People do not look like that.
That is why I set aside two or three hours for a sitting, so that the person forgets they are standing in front of a lens. Then the tension disappears and a natural portrait emerges, and it is often a good looking one.
There is a moment in a session when a person stops posing. How do you recognise it, and can it be hurried?
I do not think it can be spotted. A session is a kind of relationship, in which I myself try not to focus on getting the best possible photograph but on the comfort of the person in front of me. Then the stress and the tension subside.
You work in Opole, not in Warsaw. Do people from smaller cities approach being photographed differently?
Hard for me to say. I think it makes no difference. People in Warsaw, so called people off the street who have no contact with the photo and video industry, tend not to feel comfortable in front of a lens either, wherever they are.
Do you remember a photograph after which somebody saw themselves differently than before? What was actually in it?
I hear that often. People are used to pictures taken by family, in which they inevitably do not look their best. So when they get a portrait from me, with the light matched to them and after a gentle retouch, they are pleased that this really is them looking like that in the picture.
Three things worth taking from this conversation.
First, "I photograph badly" is almost never a diagnosis of appearance, it is a description of conditions. A family snapshot with accidental light, and a person braced in front of the camera, are not conditions in which anything can be seen honestly. Second, the moment somebody stops posing is not produced by the photographer’s technique but by the photographer giving up the chase for the best shot and focusing on the person instead. Third, the sentence "people do not look like that" is worth taking literally. The scale most of us use to judge our own face was built out of images nobody has ever met on the street.
Łukasz Andrzejewski photographs in Opole, black and white portraiture: instagram.com/fotografopolski