Portrait of the Dluzniewski Family, 1993

The starting point for the portrait of the Dluzniewski family, completed in 1993, was three black-and-white photographs depicting the faces of Emilia and Andrzej Dluzniewski and their son. Bakowski combined these on two photographic plates. The first featured nine prints of portraits of the family members, three copies of each, divided into small squares by a grid. Three out of nine photographs were left unaltered, while the artist interfered with the remaining six, carrying out a procedure as a result of which each family member had a pair of eyes belonging to another relative. A number of years after the completion of the work, in 1997, Andrzej Dluzniewski suffered an accident as a result of which he lost his sight. This event added new interpretation to Bakowski’s work. The second plate was prepared using a method known from the artist’s earlier works which consisted in cutting the original prints and mounting them on a plate according to a given scheme which resulted in a completely new composition – a synthesis of images of all three family members.