In Mark Sanak’s photographs everyone will see something different, but at the same time everyone will feel the one unifying feature – the primordial beauty of nature. In contact with this something moves in us all; emotions are born, memories return. It is his exploration of these deeply spiritual themes that elevate Marek’s work beyond classical nature photography.Within the striking beauty of his imagery lie subtle reference to forms, symbols and numbers significant to spirituality and cosmogony. The varied states of a protagonist taking us on a universal, mythological journey through their own jagged interior, often with a surprising lightness and mischevious humour.

Marek Sanak is one of the most active and recognized Polish cinematographers. In the course of his professional and personal development, achieving multiple successes, but also undergoing formative trauma, photography has taken a special place in his life – a tool for more personal and artistic expression, in which only he, the camera and nature remain. In search of suitable crystals, mysterious rock formations, sand mirages, he has visited Iceland, Malta, the Canary Islands, among others. By rearranging his photographs, he creates mysterious images with carefully planned shapes, proportions and centers of gravity. In them, he refers to ancient symbols and broad sources of culture – such as creating triptychs set in a particular visual tradition – and successive projects (Adamantem, Viridis, Aurum, Coelum) are arranged in stories of searches, crisis and discoveries, or just ordinary emotions that he has experienced in his life and that are a universal part of everyone’s life. These emotions, rendered in the creative transformation of nature, show what a great mirror nature, abstraction and photography are – another magical and, as Sanak shows, beautiful trio.

Justyna Kociszewska
Co-organizer of Fotofestiwal – International Festival of Photography in Łódź