born 1975 in Gdańsk
Krajewska graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. She is active in the fields of commercial, advertising and artistic photography, combining various aesthetics and conventions with ease. Since 2006, for several years she has cooperated in tandem with Bartek Wieczorek, a photographer, stylist and fashion designer.
Zuza Krajewska is one of the most recognisable female fashion photographers specialising in portrait photography. She functions simultaneously in the world of lifestyle magazines portraying celebrities, politicians and writers, and in art world, tackling controversial topics such as physical imperfections, corporality, stereotypes in gender perception or eroticism. Krajewska’s photographs, minimalist, lavish or balancing on the edge of kitsch, are characterised by original and fresh approaches to the topics. The artist challenges the viewer’s aesthetic habits, consciously crossing the boundaries of both commercial and artistic photography.
Zuza Krajewska, photographs from the cycle Traces: Anatol, 2012; Robert, 2007; Zosia, 2006
Photographs from the cycle Traces portray people with clearly visible defects and physical wounds, documenting the surrounding reality in a new and controversial way. The photographed persons are depicted in classic portrait shots, yet the juxtaposition of the magazine aesthetics and the flaws in the models’ appearance destroys the habits of reception of such photographs. Eczemas, scalds, missing teeth – these are the defects that define the identity of the cycle’s protagonists: they are looked at through the prism of their physical imperfection, which becomes their history. At the same time, the presented works echo the old-time medical atlases, which attempted to objectively document the patient’s illness.
