We must acknowledge eroticism as a movement of being within us.

Eroticism is first of all the most moving of realities; but it is nonetheless, at the same time, the most ignoble.

—Georges Bataille

Bartosz Wajer’s works in the From Eye to Bone series are photographs from erotic portals that are rephotographed without the standard use of a lens, the artist instead employing the exposed matrix of a digital camera, a handheld lens, and manual manipulation. Utilising the equipment against the rules of ‘proper’ photography seems to be a cognitively effective technique. By stripping erotic content of the conventions of titillating imagery, one discovers its comic and, at the same time, disturbing nature.

Movement is the grammar of these photographs. The object of desire existing in external space correlates to an inner need. The eye and the hand tremble at the thought of the image that penetrates the viewer’s body, moving from the outside world through one’s innermost dense matter—from eye to bone—to the source of pain and pleasure. Images of bodies are corporeally experienced. Like a sweet, harmless poison, they trigger chills, flushed cheeks, excessive sweating.

This isn’t the world of lucid photography. These pictures belong to the realm of the night, a land of ephemerality in which the corner of the desk, melting into the shadows, becomes itself a shadow, an armchair, a lamp, and the monster under the bed. Here, the sensual object of desire is also something out of a bad dream.

Bartosz Wajer (b. 1985, Czeladź) works at the interface of multiple artistic fields (drawing, painting, photography, digital media), idiosyncratically combining traditional tools with a modern, interdisciplinary approach to practice.

Partners: Muzeum Fotografii w Krakowie, Fundacja Lablab