Comments on: rafal pruszynski – riverside https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/ burn is an online feature for emerging photographers worldwide. burn is curated by magnum photographer david alan harvey. Wed, 07 Sep 2016 08:29:44 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.4 By: Reimar https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-49200 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:58:25 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-49200 Rafal,
this is such a fine series of images. I enjoyed looking at it so so much! Big THANK YOU!!!
Best
Reimar

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By: panos skoulidas https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48733 Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:38:03 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48733 Simple Arithmetics…
Algebra… Trigonometry…
i bet that Rafal is excellent when it comes to mathematics…
The exact opposite of my “right” brain of thinking…
but regardless…
Rafal i admired this essay…
your way of photographing which is something that even if i wanted to mimic i wouldnt be able to…
and thats good.. thats great…
All pre-thought..
all pre-designed…( Joni Karanka nailed it )
THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF LOOSENESS…
I’m supposed NOT to like the above essay… but i loved it…
you know why????
simply because its not pretentious..
not at all…
thats exactly who Rafal is… ( or at least who i think he is …)
A “dictator”… a little Stalin…
laughin… but not joking….
Rafal represents exactly the Opposite of my artistic beliefs…
I cant picture Rafal smoking a joint or even jumping from the 6th floor of a building
into a swimming pool….
Rafal is not a “jackass” like me…
and … nothing wrong with that….
Honesty i see here…
Pain and Loneliness i see here…
Loneliness that i totally connect…
Thank you Rafal…
honesty… i relate….
Great essay…
One of the best published here…
Bottomline: ” i loved it”..
i loved it
loved it
love it
loved it………..
:))))))))))
bravo

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By: john gladdy https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48696 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:31:30 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48696 I dont know. I can find no link between the statement and the images. They seem like attempts to make ‘interesting’ ‘contemporary’ pictures. I can find nothing in them that holds my interest (except 9 which i like as a standalone), and certainly nothing that binds them together as a story.
I agree that LF would probably lift them somewhat, add some needed gravity, but would that by itself be enough?
Saying all that though, many people seem to like the work. Which is good.

A telling point is that Joni said Had he seen this in a gallery he would go home with questions. Whereas I would not ever go and see work like this in the first place.
j

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By: JKaranka https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48690 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:07:10 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48690 Very nice photography. Would prefer to see them as part of Marooned, as this is probably too much of a play on the same motives for such a lenghty essay. I’m with Marcin on the larger format, as most photographers working with it don’t use many of the little compositional games present on this essay. On the other hand, it might anchor you down and the series loose the dynamics. This would make a nice quiet exhib, but on my way walking back home I’d wonder if I’ve seen really into the heart of the essay or been taken away by the compositional games that are probably its strength and weakness.

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By: Bjarte Edvardsen https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48655 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:02:01 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48655 I think you’re good at observing nice textures and I like what you’re writing about not being happy with pictures you take when you travel; to me that alone is a good enough reason for starting a project. Your photography seems very inspired by “Approaching Nowhere” by Jeff Brouws (am I right?).

My favourites here are the snowy parking lots, the blue car against the wall, the ship in the landscape and the white parasol against the dark landscape. Also really like #12 with the all the grass, reminds me of the intro of Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” where the camera suddenly turns down into the ground. On the negative side I’ve noted there are too many wide landscapes without a clear detail that stands out – I would consider dropping 06, 09, 20 and 25.

Good luck with more work with this, hope I can get the chance to see where it will lead. Thanks for sharing!

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By: Nathaniel McMahon https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48653 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:13:53 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48653 I’ve spent a bit of time in seoul watched the ‘monster’ movie got intwined with troublesome Korean women right before they were about to marry their longterm childhood boyfriends, twice. Your take on the river seems to expressing that latent feeling of exhaustion and ennui at the ‘Seoul’ of modern South Korean life. I have found Koreans to be some of the most interesting mixed up beautiful people in the world and have spend nights drinking Soujiu out of bowls confirming that. From your essay I see stranded, baron, lifelessness, estrangement etc which I guess is what you are trying to echo out of your experience of Seoul. I does not reach me though, I find the images of numbers or letters on the ground to be lost themselves and not really communicating anything expect the stranded theme. I think if you have a theme like you do each image need to take small step in a different direction from it justifying the selection of the theme in the first place and giving the theme character than belongs to the place. One or two of the images do this but the numbers and letters and last shots of bits of trash and a calling card I think are to crass and easy to include and weaken the mix rather than bolster its foundations.
I have no problem with distance and people, but web is not the place to see it though. Being able to make out the people clearly in a larger environment can really make the image and a I guess thats why the calls for large format have been made. Its seem though that you use a point and shoot with flash. I don’t think you could take these shots on large format though, setting up a tripod focusing at night with flashlights etc. Large format will take you and your project somewhere else which may be great but you will loose a lot of what you pictures a currently hold in terms of style.
I guess what i’m saying is that there are more complex ways of saying what you are trying to say than falling into the categories here i.e car in parking lot, dried up tree, calling card on the floor etc.. from a look at you website I think you could benefit from going over all you work and trying to realise the potential of your theme in other pictures you have taken. The lantern festival pics with the one guy on the hill with one hand behind his back wearing safety jacket head down, speaks to me volumes more about isolation than these photos (but I guess its not a river photo) ok i’ll shut up or i’m going to swallow my own tail, congrats.

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By: Yoon.H.K https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48652 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:54:59 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48652 Glad to see pictures about Korea, Koeran. I am a korean and live at hand Han-riverside.

Your pictures are very interesting because i have been Han-river about long time, but never feel about lonely and sorrow. But after see your pictures I realize that our city is so dark and aloneness.

Here Burn Magazine I see many pictures about Korea. I think many photographers interest for Korea. On the one hand I am happy because country’s attractive, but other hand very sad because they interest about politics and desolated cities.

{bad english sorry :) }

Any way, your pictures brilliant. cheers!

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By: Andrea https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48651 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:20:27 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48651 Beautiful and sensitive set of pictures.. I am impressed that you manage to see and capture your immediate surroundings with such fresh eyes. Maybe because you still feel like a stranger there..?

The work and your words made me curious, what made you move to South Korea?

Again, I really like your work, the mood, the distance, compositions, emptiness but with content. Good luck with the project!

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By: wendy https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48649 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:19:49 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48649 each frame..
so beautiful…
like
a compass,
finding direction…
the lines of
your
photos,
are poems
themselves….
would like to see
different
perspectives….
but your
distance
is strong
and
intelligent…..
if you want to stay this distance,
definitely explore a larger format:))
***

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By: kathleen fonseca https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48646 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:24:07 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48646 Rafal

I love this so much. I really have the feeling that you are seeing your surroundings as only an outsider can. An outsider who has been living, breathing, absorbing and sharing this world with natives, yet always ever so slightly still an outsider. Enough to really, really see, sense, feel all of it..this place has cut you like a knife yet your views are palpably tender, poignant, ironic, close, far, intimate, lonely, yearning..i get a push-pull feel. A certain ambivalence but a knowing fondness that comes from having passed through the phases—total newcomer to maybe wishing you were somepplace else and then coming through the other side to wary familiarity, respect, acceptance, tolerance and appreciation. To me, a stunning offering of your inner world as told through your views of your outer world. Congratulations. Oh yes, you also give very good sky. :)

Best
Kathleen

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By: Rafal Pruszynski https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48645 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:18:33 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48645 Damon,

that’s true about the river. It doesn’t help that the river is almost totally cut off from the city by two huge highways running alongside it on the southern and northern end and that access to it is frustratingly difficult. You can only access the river if you know where the access tunnels are and they aren’t easy to find. Other cities use their rivers far, FAR better than Seoul. But that’s changing slowly. There’s a huge development project now happening here, called the Han River Renaissance project, and they are trying to integrate the river into the city much more by creating more recreational spaces such as pools and beaches along the river to get the people to come to the river. They still need to make access to the river easier in my opinion. The size of the river is something nobody can really do anything about though.

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By: OZ https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48644 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:42:37 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48644 I am in between…
I don’t know why…

Probably because between the speech and the images I feel a certain pretention in the words that is not achieve in the photographs. It disturb me as far all the images are good, but really “déja vu” and doesn’t respond to the text, I would keep only 3 of them.

I don’t see any intimacy at all but empty parking and a crasy asian modern city among a the other side of the river as many other asian country amoung a river…so if the text push me to imagine that it is intimacy because your girlfriend is waiting you alone in the car (#4) I am perplex with all the words you wrote and some others I rode in the comments.

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By: Herve https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48636 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:33:16 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48636 to celebrate that which is nearly impossible to articulate….
——————————————————–
You will never be faulted for not trying, Bob!!!! :-)

Though comparison (and lineage) was frowned upon here lately, I must say that your landscapes, Rafal (inner and outer…All is said?), bring to mind work done under the stimulus of what is now referred to, as the DUSSELDORF school (from which people like Struth, Gursky came about).

Probably why i instantly lamented the size of my screen, ie. too small. But maybe the idea that the images should be printed “big” is a pavlovian reflex acquired after being acquainted to the work of the artists cited above. What we could ask you first is if you have print size in mind, and also if the pixels would bear a large printing format.

For me, what is celebrated here, is the very simple fact of looking, and the task at hand being of course, to make it the art of “very simply: looking!”. Therein lies, of course, the basic covenant in all arts. To have the outer reflect the inner.

Photography, because of all the possible interpretations, including denial, one can give to the simplest picture, and because it is after all so easy to look and capture what is looked at (but a lot less what is “seen”), often trumps us in refusing to see what is looked at.

And as often, refusing to look at what we see
(the reason why, for ex. editing our images is so difficult, and why so many think they have seen enough and therefore a picture becomes “good enough for me”, why look when you can…. see?).

So for me, and i like very much your work here BTW, Rafal, what is striven for here, and ultimately what brings such type of work home, no matter if it happens consciously or unconsciously, is achieving the perfect balance between looking and seeing, outer and the inner, space and emotion.

I must say some of the shots seem a bit off from the rest, less succesful then, especially the 2 first night shots (3 and 4?).

The few images with one single human presence, here or there, show us you may be perplexed at times, and even amused too, but not alienated. I certainly do not feel alienated, personally. But rather familiar, and (maybe the suburban creature in me) totally at home.

In that sense, the accents provided by the appearance of wife and son, of a woman and a child, could be necessary inflections in your essay.

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By: damoncoulter https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48634 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:33:23 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48634 Really stunning pics upto about 22 when, apart from the title pic, the emptiness of most of the images seemed a little bit (if you`ll excuss the irony) like fillers. Sorry Rafal but I think the first shots you have put up are truely amazing at capturing the huge, impersonal size of Seoul. Though I know that is the point of the photographic story, as you outlined it, I am still left shocked at how Seoul can look so much like we imagine North Korea to look like or the concrete Utopian landscapes of Communist Europe. Even the desperate splashes of colour like the painting on the concrete river bank only add to the feeling of denial about the ugliness of the place. I love that you have so effortlessly captured that. Myself, when I visited Seoul the river just seemed too big and remote to even be part of the city and I mostly ignored it prefering to spend my time in the streets and alleys where the life seemed to be, here you have put it in the foreground and shown the city rising around it like a distant, as yet unknown land (or island) seen across the sea. Genius.
Damon

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By: Twitter Trackbacks for rafal pruszynski – riverside | burn magazine [burnmagazine.org] on Topsy.com https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48631 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:23:58 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48631 […] rafal pruszynski – riverside | burn magazine http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside – view page – cached (click the red icon in the lower right hand corner, or press the “F” key at any time, to switch to the full screen version) Rafal Pruszynski — From the page […]

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By: Patricia Lay-Dorsey https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48630 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:56:05 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48630 Rafal, you drew me into your world frame by frame. Not just your outer world but your inner world as well. Especially your inner world. The place where you stand and watch the river, see the lights of the city, feel at home and not at home all at the same time. You stand apart from this place and these people but also let them inside the most intimate spaces of your heart, for the beloveds of your life–your wife and son–are of this place and its people. I feel this ambiguity, this paradox in “Riverside.” I also experience your humor, especially in the images of the swan boats.

This is a strangely deep and moving essay, one in which few humans are seen but human emotions are at its core. Like Bob, I have seen this essay evolve from its humble beginnings and am awestruck at where you have taken it. Bravo, Rafal. You define the term “authorship.”

Patricia

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By: Ramon Mas https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48629 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:50:04 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48629 Rafal,

As I finished watching the essay, I thought I would give you a piece of advice about going large format….but after having read the comments it wouldn’t be too original, would it? Nice work is all I can say.

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By: Rafal Pruszynski https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48628 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:17:59 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48628 Those are great words Bob, and you are correct about #21. Good call.

Ive never heard of Counting by Numbers so I googled it, and it looks interesting. I dont think I could rent it anywhere in Korea though. The Host though Ive seen and loved it. One of the movies I really loved was Vanilla Sky, especially the scene where Manhattan is totally deserted.

David, large format would be great but not right now due to financial reasons. Eventually though it would be a dream.

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By: david alan harvey https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48625 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:10:45 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48625 MARCIN…

i have thought the same thing about Rafal….go large format for this work…

cheers, david

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By: Anthony R.Z. https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/08/rafal-pruszynski-riverside/#comment-48623 Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:56:53 +0000 http://www.burnmagazine.org/?p=3827#comment-48623 This is fabulous! Contemplative story from one more emerging photographer… What camera did you use?:). I wannabe artist and emerging phtographer as well:).

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