Karczeby

This exhibition is its Scottish premier.

Adam Pańczuk studied at the University of Economics and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and lives in Warsaw. With his projects Adam seems to be asking questions, at the same time directly and metaphorically, about identity, consciousness and attitude towards life of the people he meets along the way. His unique skill to tell gripping yet intimate stories with images has won many prestigious awards including, Pictures of the Year International, Magnum Expression Award, Grand Press Photo.

Karczeby is one of the dialects spokenin the East of Poland and is a mixture of Polish and Bellarussian. People strongly attached to the soil, cultivating it for generations with their bare hands, are called Karczebs, a word also used to describe what remains of a tree after it is cut down - a stubborn stump which remains stuck in the ground. This also applies to the people – as it was not easy for the authorities to root them out from their land, even in Stalinist times. The price paid for their attachment to place and the soil was often their freedom or their life. After death, buried near to their farmland, a Karczeb became the soil, later cultivated by their descendants.

www.adampanczuk.pl
www.flowphotofest.co.uk