It appeared that not only Impressionists and Adam Mazek were looking for inspiration on the streets.Â
Who was another artist encouraging other people to seek incentives outside studios’ walls? It was Frida Kahlo. According to Andrea Kettenmann’s book, named “Kahlo” (Taschen), The Mexican female painter encouraged her students to seek creative powers on the streets of Mexico City. To be more precise, she told them:
Muchachos, locked up here in school, we can’t do anything. Let’s go out into the street. Let’s go and paint the life in the street.
Since I knew Frida Kahlo’s artworks mainly via her self-portraits, I must admit that I was surprised when I read this quote. I did not suppose that such marvelous painters of self-portraits, like Frida Kahlo, encouraged others to paint and look for inspiration on the streets. I’d had presumed that she would have encouraged students to find inspiration in themselves, their memories, and their experiences. Still, I do not doubt that she was right in taking her pupils to paint life on the streets. When I was attending the photography school between 2016 and 2018, teachers (Bartek Mokrzycki and Tomek Grzyb) also organized photographic lessons on the streets of Warsaw and Wroclaw, and the Polish metropolitan area named Tricity. The last consists of three cities: Gdansk, Gdynia, and Sopot.
How happy I was during those street journeys.
It does not mean that I am unhappy today (I wrote this post on the 7th of September, 2021). Still, I merely want to admit that photography school was a marvelous time for me. The truth is that I was counciosly (as a street photographer) taking photos not only in Warsaw, Tricity and Wroclaw, but also in such cities and towns like: Riga, Jurmala, Vilniaus, Kaunas, Goldap, Elk, Bialowieza, Ostrow Mazowiecka, Brok, Wolomin, Piaseczno, Rudniki, Kielce, Krakow, Zakopane, Lviv or Budapest. Still, the core of my creative activity is focused on Warsaw. Undoubtedly, Warsaw’s streets are most inspiring to me regarding street photography.
Is that mean that I would not want to take photos in, e.g., Mexico City? Of course, I would like to take pictures in Mexico City and in thousands of other cities, towns, and villages. Why? Because we can find much inspiration on the streets in every corner of this world. Go out, my Dear Friend, and seek incentives outside wherever you live!
