All us animals

Rabsztyn Castle has stood on its limestone rock since the end of the thirteenth century. In 1657, during the Swedish Deluge, it was burned and plundered. It was a war of systematic theft and destruction: libraries and relics were carried off, and everything of any value was looted. Barbarism in its purest form. The castle never regained its former shape, and the destruction went on: the walls were dismantled for building material, and at the turn of the twentieth century the tower fell. The consequences of that war can still be seen in these walls. The castle exists in two orders at once: as a silent ruin and as its reconstruction. New bridge planks, a new gate and new roof tiles stand beside stone that remembers the devastation of war. The series does not illustrate this story. It begins with the mass of the ruin, its empty windows and broken crowns of wall, and then it leads: across the bridge, to the door. The door is closed. The window grilles, as contemporary as everything that allows the structure to endure, close what time has opened. The threshold has been rebuilt, but not restored. What is new does not return what was. It stands beside it and sustains its absence. One can reach it. It is not crossed.

A good photograph is not necessarily a beautiful photograph. And a beautiful photograph is not necessarily a good one. We live in a culture of instant visual gratification. Crank up the contrast and saturation, add dramatic clouds, put a large rock in the foreground of a wide-angle landscape, and you have a recipe that works. The image is immediately readable, visually attractive, and easy to like. Then, two seconds later, we move on to the next one. Scroll through Instagram and look at the same famous locations photographed thousands of times, with only minor variations in composition, light, and processing. Technically accomplished images, often visually impressive, yet remarkably interchangeable. The place is shown, but the photographer's individual way of seeing it is much harder to find. There is nothing inherently wrong with saturated colours, strong contrast, wide-angle lenses, or a prominent foreground. The problem begins when these become formulas rather than deliberate choices, when visual impact replaces visual thought, and when immediate approval becomes the primary measure of success. Readability is not the same as meaning. Visual impact is not the same as depth. And a like is not a critical response. I have little patience for, and frankly despise, the culture of mutual back-patting that permeates so much of online photography. Endless likes, automatic compliments, and comments designed to keep everyone comfortable do not interest me. Likes mean nothing to me as a measure of photographic quality. They tell me that someone clicked a button, not that they looked carefully, understood the image, or thought about what it was trying to do. I am not looking for approval. I am looking for meaningful conversations about photography. I want to discuss why an image works or fails, what it communicates, how its composition and visual decisions shape its meaning, what others see in it, and what remains unresolved. I value thoughtful disagreement far more than empty praise. A critical observation that makes me reconsider my own work is worth infinitely more to me than a hundred likes.