The zine was created as the culmination of the kajnikaj project, its role was to record the series and preserve it in material form. The photographs presented in it go beyond the scope of the works exhibited so far, they differ in order and form of presentation.
Book Description:
Sometimes it seems to me that everything is going to collapse. Gray from soot tenements and devastated sidewalks, under which mine passages stretch. I live in a small town in Silesia, where something interesting may have once happened, but it was so long ago that it has become buried in memory. It’s not pretty here, it’s not ugly. There is no legacy of previous generations, or even an expression of the lancer fantasy of the current ones. If it weren’t for the dead mine shafts heaping in the air, my city could be anywhere. Or rather, nowhere. “Somewhere” is an adverb. In the Silesian dialect it has its equivalent – “kajnikaj”. If we started using it, my place would be a little less “anywhere”. This is an obvious form of taming the reality we find, allowing us to superstructure it and create a kind of mythology. The provincial town becomes the background for extracting the history of the family living there, but not from real events, but imaginative content, serving to find the ultimate meaning. Looking at the sky hovering above the declining city and constructing rachitic machines, I try to find my way out of the place where I was born and raised, while realizing that this is an action doomed to failure.
About the author:
Polish photographer and visual artist born and based in Silesia. Graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań and the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. Finalist and winner of numerous photography competitions in Poland and abroad. Published in magazines such as Fisheye Magazine and the British Journal of Photography. In her work she balances between documentary photography and fiction.
In 2019, kajnikaj was a finalist for Photographic Publication of the Year, and was presented at the Arles Festival as part of the Polish Paradise project. In 2024, the zine will be part of the Budapest photobook exhibition organized by ISBN+.
