Jolanta Mazur is a self-taught Polish photographer interested in symmetry in urban landscapes. In her series Human in Geometry, she builds a colourful parallel world, filled with wandering silhouettes. A geometrical and alienating universe, inspired by fine arts.
Jolanta Mazur discovered photography when she moved to Malaysia in 2016. She started striding along the streets of Kuala Lumpur, in search of unique vantage points. ‘I am always on the lookout for scenes that have a strong graphic element in them’, the photographer tells us. ‘I try to work the scene to achieve visual purity and I favour minimal compositions’. Human in Geometry is a dislocated series. The pictures, coming from both Poland and Malaysia, blend together and contrast each other. ‘I really like that ambiguity, blurring the lines’, she explains. From those images, appears a strange world. Close, yet, far away. An urban and deserted territory, filled with magnetic colours. ‘A world of colourful yet stifling artificiality and urban alienation’.
Pictorial photography
Jolanta is influenced by paintings. Her abstract and geometrical images sometimes feel as if they were painted, as the artist plays with reality. ‘I sometimes use a long lens’, she confides. ‘Its ability to decompress depth transforms the image, making it look flatter, like a painting’. The photographer then invents a new, alienating, almost frightening space. ‘It is probably the reflection of my own thoughts, feelings and fears’, she adds. The skyline has vanished from her pictures. Without it, the men captured by the camera become preys, trapped inside this urban and claustrophobic space. From these commonplaces, Jolanta creates an unusual pictorial photography. Her subjects, anonymous silhouettes, wander around, alone and lost. Like shadows brushed on a canvas. ‘I like elevating seemingly unexciting places into something more interesting and ambiguous. Those prosaic scenes are thus transformed into something poetic’.
© Jolanta Mazur
