Body As a Negative - Izabela Jurcewicz
In this work Izabela Jurcewicz deals with traumatic memories written in the body on a cellular level. She was an inter-organ tumor patient, one of 300 cases worldwide, where science had few answers to the cause and how to proceed.
This experience of a patient being ‘on view’, researched and scanned, coined her relationship with the camera and ways of seeing a human. These medical experiences, especially surgeries, live as a photographic negative in her body and life, which henceforth produce images, including the ones that form this book. In the act of return, Izabela replaces the invasive surgical instrument with her camera as a receptive device to register, merge and enable a ritual of healing.
To synchronize the level of knowledge in her body and mind, she reperforms the trauma under her conditions and rewrites her memories, aiming to change them at a cellular level. At the same time this work gives her perspective to see and support her father, who at that time is going through intensive cancer treatment. The project highlights the process of emphatic engagement that brings dimensionality to the body and self again and grows a capacity to join with the suffering of others.
Released November 2022
Photographs and text by Izabela Jurcewicz
Design by Cara Buzzell
Softcover, 10.5 x 8.5 inches
96 pages
Edition of 300
ISBN: 978-1-949608-29-8
Trade Edition: $40.00
The first 80 books sold come with a 3x4 inch signed photograph of Isolated. Alientated & On View (see pink goldfish image below), printed on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique 310 fine art, archival paper.
Isolated. Alientated & On View.
The first 80 books sold come with a 3x4 inch signed photograph of this image, printed on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique 310 fine art, archival paper.
Her intimate self-portraits in combination with the meticulously designed sets and photographs of people around her, open up a conversation about identity, body, memory, trauma, and the relation between a healthy and not-healthy body and mind. - Patrycja Rozwora, Contemporary LYNX
About Izabela Jurcewicz
Izabela’s work reflects on a body as a living archive, using personal perspective to approach issues regarding identity, body, memory and health/disease. Izabela is a recipient of Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation Award 2021 by International Center of Photography, laureate of Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents 2020 by Luma Arles & ENSP, COCA Center for Contemporary Artists 2020 finalist, and a runner-up in New Delta Review’s Ryan R. Gibbs Photography Contest 2018. Izabela’s photographs have been exhibited in over thirty exhibitions, including the International Center of Photography, ClampArt, Baxter St CCNY, School of Visual Arts Flatiron Gallery, Affirmation Arts in New York, RISD Museum and Musa Pavilion accompanying exhibition during the 59th Venice Biennial. Her works were presented during such international photography festivals as Unseen Amsterdam (Unseen Dummy Awards), Month of Photography in Bratislava (OFF), TIFF Festival in Wroclaw, 12th Fotofestival in Lodz, 8th Biennale of Photography in Poznan. She was an artist-in-residence at the School of Visual Arts and graduated with an MFA in Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design Photography Department.
