Jakub Stępień, Józef

As far as I can remember my grandparents were living separately, each of them had their own room, bed, TV set, all in one house. They did not interfere with each other’s places. Everything has changed after my grandfather’s death. Grandma took all of his space, made it her storeroom.

Initially, the aim of the project was to document what was left of my grandfather’s life, but during its implementation, deeper dependencies of family relationships appeared. It allowed me to identify with my grandfather, discover what was always hidden.

During the last years of his life, my grandfather did not part with his cowboy hat which I brought him from vacation by the sea. As he said, this was the best gift he ever got. After scanning the negatives, I interfered with new objects and changed space, marking what is new and collecting tissues from what was left of my grandfather’s space. I reconstructed it based on memories and remembrance. I also interfered with the figure of my grandmother, in order to symbolically change her and ensure her anonymity.

The work took the form of a story about life in a given place, the history of activities that took place there in time, seizure of space, interferance with it and interdependencies between individuals.

Kuba Stępień (born 1997) – a photographer and visual artist living in Łódź. He studies at the Faculty of Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. He made his debut in the ShowOFF Section at Photomonth in Krakow in 2018. Participant of the exhibition organized by Sexedpl and Vogue Polska in Powidoki / Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. A graduate of the Academy of Photography in Krakow