"Clear of People" at SPOT Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia

In Spot Gallery, Michal Iwanowski, the Polish photograph living in the UK, is going to present his project Clear of People, recording the author’s reconstruction of his grandfather’s and uncle’s epic journey through precarious landscape. On their three-month-long fugitive journey from Soviet captivity in Siberia to their native Poland, they crossed more than 2000 kilometres during night-time in order to remain undetected and hidden from other people. Around 70 years later, Michal Iwanowski embarked on his own journey, faithfully retracing the journey of his ancestors and documenting the process with his camera. The series of photographs captured during this personal “odyssey” is the basis of the project Clear of People, while the work was subsequently published in a form of a photobook.
In his work, Michal Iwanowski continuously explores the connection between landscape and memory, basing his photo-projects on his pursuit of micro-histories, individual memories and fading traces. The author interprets such narratives, which would otherwise be lost with time, through photography and text and thereby establishes a strong synergy between a personal story and landscape captured in the photographs. Thus, the work Clear of People represents a certain study of nature filled with stories about displacement, loss and searching. The series is not just an extraordinary testimony of one personal experience but also a universal dedication to all who, even today, are fleeing war zones and, in pursuit of safety, find themselves in similar situations.
As Iwanowski states, “what had started as a quiet tribute soon turned into a meditation on the strength of the human spirit.” His photographs are much more than a literal dedication to landscape – they testify about the fact that there are no “innocent” places and that every path we take is marked by layers of suffering and hope.