Marcin Dzieniszewski, Berlin
Member Since January 2008
Artist Statement My first camera was an old Russian rangefinder called Smena. Actually... it was my older brother’s and it was broken but at the age of 5 or 6 I did not care. I loved carrying it around and pretending I was taking photos. Growing older I started to be more demanding and broken Smena was not fun anymore. I put photography aside and got myself other hobbies.
At high school it came back... my friend had an old Russian SLR - Zenith. He did not need it anymore and we made a good deal. Well... it turned to be not so good when the camera broke during the first trip. What a disappointment. I decided - no more Russian cameras. It took a bit to save some money but finally, in December 2000, I got my first Canon EOS 300.
I use it till this day but it mostly serves as a dust collector.
Throughout the years and dozens of used film rolls I taught myself about exposures, apertures, composition and all that stuff. In particular I became a fan of black and white photography and such masters as Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier Bresson. I have spent whole days in the darkroom learning about Adams’ famous zone system, masking, dodging, burning and smelly chemicals. Here I decided to switch to medium format and I bought a beautiful Hasselblad 500. I use it till this day but it mostly serves as a book end. Nevertheless it was a great time of developing my own negatives and making my own prints. This knowledge is invaluable even in the digital era.
Time goes by and I desired my photography to pay back. I decided to send a few samples to a stock agency. In order to do that I scanned some of my reversals and edited them in Photoshop. And here comes the turning point... I found how much faster and easier, nicer and better it was than wasting the best time of my life in darkroom. For many years I’ve been reluctant to move to digital knowing too well of its shortcomings. Having a great sentiment for traditional analog photography and lots of respect to those few who still refuse pixels I knew my digital days are coming.
Over the next few years my daily jobs were taking more and more time away from me and I did not have much left for photography and especially for time consuming developing and scanning of the films. Occasionally I borrowed my friend’s EOS something…D so as not to forget what the world looks like through the lens. In 2010 I decided that nowadays DSLRs are good enough to get one. I was even more convinced with the release of first VideoDSLR which came together with my growing interest in cinematography. I became the happy owner of the Canon EOS 7D...
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