Title: I see you
Author: Damian Chrobak
PIX.HOUSE Foundation
Total Limited Edition of 300: £20 standard (100 copies)
Signed Limited Edition with print (200 copies – 3 images available) Edition# 1- 50 = £50
51-100 = £70
101-150 = £100
151-200 = £140
Available from www.damianchrobak.com & The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop
Copyright © Damian Chrobak
As a resident of London I am always keen to see the city through new eyes and Damian Chrobak’s view does not disappoint. With a body of work spanning ten years the city is revealed for the quirky, confusing, gritty, fun and fascinating place it is. In the centre of the book the paper stock changes and the series contained within, Everywhere I Look I’m Being Looked At depicts instances of the city literally peering back at you. Eyes in posters, the covers of magazines, peoples clothing and in one unnerving image a tattoo on the back of someone’s neck all fix their gaze as if to remind us that we are always being watched.
Copyright © Damian Chrobak
I see you is filled with human emotion and wonderful moments of mise en scène. On occasion the perfect props for farce appear, such as a pile of arms from a mannequin on a shop floor, seemingly grasping at the ankles of a woman nearby. Two men facing each other comically squint through binoculars in a small store as if it were the opening gambit for a Monty Python sketch. Couples kissing in public and lone figures in the city reflect the bipolar state of this huge metropolis. Connected and disconnected, each figure claims its space before Chrobak’s lens. Although anonymous they appear familiar. Humanity displayed in all its glory alongside its flaws reveals the fractured and delicate structure of the city and the people who inhabit it. Each picture conveys pace and movement, stories at their beginning or events which may or may not have just concluded. The irony of our proximal closeness is never too far away from the distance we so often have from each other. As the doors of a packed tube train are about to close the figure of a man in an advertisement on the tunnel wall behind reaches up as if to escape from the roof the carriage. Similarly, two men closing an iron gate look more like convicts behind bars trapped between a doorway and the gate. Finding these amusing moments when one looks and keeps looking hard at their surroundings is easy, however catching them in time on camera is not. I see you is a great debut and addition to any photobook collection.
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