Bownik. Things in themselves | Polnisches Institut Duesseldorf (02/2016) (original) (raw)

Bownik. Things in themselves | Polnisches Institut Duesseldorf (02/2016)

Immanuel Kant, in seeking the irrefutable foundations of unshakeable knowledge, set two separate spheres against each other – the world of things which we experience using our senses (predominantly sight) and all that which is beyond the realm of the senses, yet which we arrive at through logical thinking. He labelled the former "phenomena" – etymologically speaking – that which manifests (the Greek phainomenon), and the latter "things-in-themselves" or noumena (the Greek for mind is nous). The first of these concepts has now become a permanent part of the philosophical canon, giving birth, among other things, to the study of phenomenology (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger). The second, however, seemed suspect from the very start, hence it was very quickly removed from broader philosophical discourse and eventually forgotten. We are referencing The Kantian differentiation here as a sort of conceptual item which will not only help us appreciate the conceptual complexity of the works of Pawel Bownik, but we can also use to then ask several questions about the current status of photography as a whole. Today, it seems, due to the widespread use of new technologies, we are more and more often thinking of photography only in terms of that which can be seen – the flat image to be enjoyed whether it is found in a " white cube " gallery, printed on shiny paper in a coffee table book or scrolling across a smartphone screen. We feel no difference between any of these contexts, forgetting about that which has meaning, yet remains inaccessible to the human eye.