Short story about Janusz
And some little extra
Hello everyone, this is Gabriele Lopez and this is one of my few newsletter I send about staying in touch and different initiatives around the photography world.
Since there have been a lot of newcomers lately, I really hope that you will enjoy being here…this one will be way shorter than those in the archive :)
Short story about Janusz
I had the pleasure and privilege to work with Roberto on this project in the last months. Different hours of editing and work done together in the Red Room space gave birth to this beautiful and simple little book.
As you may know from my previous newsletters, I am really into this kind of personal and unprofessional photography, dedicated to the close and loved one and to deep personal urgencies. The “Broken Poems” micro-publishing adventure was born just to let these kind of work exist in some way.
Being an amateur and a beginner. What a wonderful thing.
Short story about Janusz it’s a book full of love and it comes out page after page.
It never talks too loud but it contains a lot of life and humanity.
"Janusz was my uncle. He lived together with his parents in a suburb of Wroclaw.
He drank and smoked and sometimes he did paintings and sculptures. He was free, so much free that he got lost. This is my short story about him in the few visits I made between 1994 and 2016.
Janusz had a problem of addiction to alcohol (to name it sweet). His odd way of living attracted me in some ways. When he was not drunk he made beautiful paintings, small sculptures and wooden objects of great craft. Most of the time, he was used to walk around the house, swearing, talking and laughing alone, smoking one cigarette after another and drinking beer or wine or whatever. My grandmother, Helena, took care of him the best she could. She was his mother and it shouldn’t be easy to be stretched between the love for his son and the need to make something to heal him forcedly. At the end, the first prevailed and she has sacrificed her whole life around him.....
Where to find the book?
You can have a look at the book here or see the Private Magazine feature article for an article about the story behind this work.
The book will be displayed in some local library in Milan and at our next DIY Night, coming around the end of May (I will write more about this in future) but since it’s not a large production and will probably silently disappear, you can ask directly to Roberto a copy, both by getting in touch by Instagram or by our old school but always good email message.
So, no online shop this time, sorry…we like it more this way.
I really hope it gets the attention and love it deserves.
Keep going
It’s totally incredible that another winter has gone, it look incredible.
I did a fraction of what I hoped, but I started.
There’s a story that comes in my mind over and over recently, and I’ve talked about it with some people passing by my darkroom recently when they were captured by seeing skateboard decks hanging on the walls.
There was a moment when I skated and I was thinking “ok I am starting to be theoretically old for this stuff but I am still feeling good”. I can remember where I was, my board, the sounds around and even some faces of people sitting on a bench. I could recognise them instantly. I was 28.
It looks like it happened a month ago, really.
In this upcoming work season I will not be captured again in the mayhem of work, there’s a lot I want to go back giving this fast and precious disappearing thing.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
— Erich Fromm, “The Sane Society”