Photo Journal Monday : Marzena Abrahamik
Ice Water © Marzena Abrahamik, 2020
From A Strange Place
Images and words from Marzena Abrahamik
“The first thing I found was this: What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially”.
Roland Barthes
From a Strange Place, is an experimental photographic series that draws from transcending experiences in birth, death, and psychedelics. The photographs combine ordinary experiences that reference indistinguishable moments of clarity, connectedness, spiritual ecstasy, and transformation. From a Strange Place, reflects an exploration of the intricacies within human relations that are rooted in high and low pleasures (bodily and intellectually), and how birth, death, and psychedelics are revisited through memory, historically and culturally. I am interested in these ordinary experiences as they can set in motion a transformation or profound disorientation. The meaning of the photographs morphs as the experiences travel through memories, attachments, dreams, and changing bodies; the significance is obtuse, not a flat truth but rather a view into what the details in a landscape, a point of focus in a still life, or a gesture in a portrait can offer.
HANG IN THERE, on 2 yrs 4 hrs 44 min of sleep © Marzena Abrahamik, 2018
My supporting research for the project includes the work of Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, who described the characteristics of the cosmic unity experience as “transcendence of the subject-object dichotomy, exceptionally strong positive affect (peace, tranquility, serenity, bliss), a special feeling of sacredness, transcendence of time and space, experience of pure being, and a richness of insights of cosmic relevance”. Grof further influences the project through his research into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness to further explore the human psyche in relation to our birth. The project also engages with a 2011 study by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which stated that 94% of participants who received psilocybin reported the experience as 1 of the top 5 most meaningful experiences of their lives such as the birth of a child or death of a loved one, and 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.
The Rose of Paracelsus © Marzena Abrahamik, 2018
Through research at the Betsy Gordon Psychoactive Substance Research Collection, I investigate threads within the historical that articulate a system of transference – a methodical extension of consciousness. The photographs reference an extension of the static and dynamic feminine, via considerations of distorted realities and perceptual illusions, into ecological crisis. Through the use of documentary-style and studio photography, I draw out the potential of a larger narrative that addresses the resources of power in commonality of experience: in the archetypal transcending events that we all share. From a Strange Place, threads these events through maternal separation, attachment, and the sentiments of high and low pleasure in order to arrive upon the questions that surround what further shapes psychological and biological responses to environments, which in turn has been crucial to the reproduction of feminine arc.
Secrets & Sacraments © Marzena Abrahamik, 2020
The sequence of the photographs study how a composition of a romanesco can function next to a portrait of an exhausted mother nursing an impatient toddler, via a fractal consideration of a bond’s inevitable breaking. The fractal connects archetypal concepts within nature (galaxies, depth of sea, fear of eternity/infinity) to psychedelics. The patterns of the fractal also reference formulation of memory through the psychological concept of mastering trauma, in which we need to continuously re-create trauma in order to master it. Through images of water, the photographs render an inherent parallel with abyss-tropes and how self-imposed othering can create isolation. Or is it the other way around?
View more of Marzena’s work here
Black Water ©Marzena Abrahamik, 2018
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. By Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, ADivision of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980, pg. 4Stanislav Grof, “Varieties of Transpersonal Experiences, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. IV, No. 1, 1972, p52
