The latest Zbigniew Libera’s project is a series of photographs featuring scenes with guerrillas made in several photographic sessions. The series also comprises the phonographs of texts, either quoted from others or written by the artists himself. Its almost iconic representations of posing guerrillas, group scenes during bathing or in marches might be taken for illustrations for some press release. However, the visual and textual narration of these several dozen photographs is a fictitious story which has its point of reference in the waywardly treated myths of masculinity and heroism. Despite military accessories, these images bear no aggression, and the guerrillas, burdened with guns, would rather be associated with the yearnings of many Peter Pans, escaping into the world of fantasy. This literary association is also suggested by the artist himself in the texts he photographed. Similar, the scenery might also be associated with the reality of Neverland, where the “innocent and heartless” heroes pose in refined frames featuring exotic plants and animals.
The things which Libera does in the photographs of his guerrillas is what Umberto Eco dubbed as “semiological guerrilla war” years ago. Libera’s fight for meanings is equally canny as the guerrilla tactics. Prepared pages of magazines with photographs or a feigned journal of a guerrilla – are the things by which Libera makes us receive media messages more carefully, similar to what he did in his earlier works. He turns our attention to the ways in which myths are created and spread in our contemporary visual culture.
Bożena Czubak
The Gay Innocent and the Heartless, 2008, book of 160 pages, staged photographs, photographs of texts, Profile Foundation.
Exhibition series: 37 photographs of various dimensions.
