AMERICA NOW
I am deeply disturbed by the tragic school shooting in Texas. Pre-child, I would have been saddened, angry, mortified. Having a child, I’m experiencing a sense of fear and soul crushing agony as my mind wanders into that classroom. This photo kept creeping up into my head for the last few days. It’s a photo I made sometime last year. I pulled it out this morning and realized that today, on many levels, it serves as a metaphor to my mindset as it relates to this tragedy.
The parent, who is looking at me, In fear, saying “I know”. The child looks up trustingly at the parent, “also knows” but chooses to trust the pulling hand. The line across the bottom is the way they inevitably must take, unable to stray away from. The vertical line, a door, the holes - bullet holes. The valve, a symbol of mass death.
- Robert Swiderski, May 29, 2022
STARVED
“Long after the foresters are gone, the deafening noise of cracking wood along with the unceasing burr of the chainsaw cutting through the tree limbs seems to echo through the mangled landscape. As I stand there, surveying the day’s work, fumbling with my tripod, I wonder if the sound is only reverberating in my head or if it’s the forest actually crying. Then I look down at the orange-red sawdust splattered like blood all over the white snow and think it must be the latter. On my way home, I spot a little silver cross nailed to a tree and realize that some tragic events are of personal nature and some others are simply more collective.”
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
The term Polonia pertains to Poles living abroad, but I would argue it describes a certain attitude. One riddled with anxiety to belong and the contradictory need to stay separated, all interwoven with a theoretical sense of patriotism and an almost monarchic attitude towards the Catholic Church.
This sensation of the intangible found its way into each photo, layering it with hidden metaphors, which make the concept of Polonia a highly polarizing subject to my generation. As I started questioning my own sense of belonging I have cautiously included my own, concealed, self portrait. I, like many of my generation, seem to be unclear as to our sense of identity within the world.
