No Words, 2022, Przemek Zajfert

Przemek Zajfert – born in 1959 in Poland. He completed his secondary education and studied geology at the University of Wrocław/Breslau. His first encounter with photography occurred in a photo club. In 1981, he was called up for Polish military service, where he worked as a regimental photographer. As political pressure from the communist regime increased, he decided to flee. Since 1985, he has lived and worked as a freelance light and photo artist in Stuttgart.

For more than 20 years, he traveled the world with his “Black Box” and the simplest pinhole cameras. The cube served as his gallery, creative studio, and sometimes even his sleeping place. He always regarded the unusual images that emerged during his travels as mere byproducts of his art. Themes of time, transience, and emptiness run like a thread through his work.

In his pieces, Zajfert employs both the technique of the pinhole camera and heliography, developed by Niepce between 1822 and 1827. Heliography was the first photographic process that allowed an image to be permanently captured using a camera obscura.

Together with his long-time friend Burkhard Walter, he founded the online project “camera obscura/2005/1-inf.” Dedicated to the work of Roman Opalka, the project started in 2005 and continues to this day, making it one of the longest-running online art projects in the world.

In 2010, he initiated the participatory project “The 7th Day.” As Niepce’s influence is a constant companion in Zajfert’s work, this project is based on another photographic experiment that Niepce conducted in 1816. To date, over 13,000 people have participated in the project, capturing photographs that have been exposed for at least 7 days, some for several years. Places, objects, and moments leave their alienated imprint on photographic paper, gaining a new aesthetic dimension through overlapping layers of time.

Zajfert’s kinetic installations, based on Muybridge’s studies of movement, attempt to capture the poetics of the moment, which is so difficult to put into words. He is the author of several illustrated books and artist books, including Camera Obscura Tübingen, Camera Obscura Heidelberg, and Monolith.

Exhibitions and Projects (Selection):

1979 – Ostrzeszowski Cross: nicht nur auf der Bahn, Wystawa Fotograficzna, KF KADR — Czesław Bojszczak, Przemysław Zajfert, Marek Dytfeld
1982 – Wystawa fotograficzna — Lasek Klasztorny in Ostrzeszów, A.D. 1982, Janusz Gajda, Przemysław Zajfert
1996 – Lichtskulptur: Der fliegende Pfeil, Stuttgart — Hafen
1997 – In einm dunklen Raum…, Installation, Stuttgart — Hafen
1999 – Vietnam Diskurs, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
1999 – Camera Obscura, BWA Wrocław – Galerie DESIGN (mit Marek Pozniak)
2000 – Malerei mit Licht und Pixeln (mit Kurt Buchwald, Arno Fischer, Jerzy T. Lewczyński, Marek Pozniak), Altes Rathaus, Kulturhaus Potsdam
2000 – Camera Obscura, KIK, Stuttgart (mit Marek Pozniak)
2001 – Malerei mit Licht und Pixeln (mit Kurt Buchwald, Arno Fischer, Jerzy T. Lewczyński, Marek Pozniak), Ausstellungszentrum und Ludwig-A.-Meyer-Haus, Guben
2004: Puzzle kleine Schalterhalle, Installation, Buchvorstellung, Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof
2004 – Camera Obscura (mit Marek Pozniak), Mala Galeria, Warschau, Polen
2005 – Camera Obscura 2005/1-inf, Internet-Projekt (mit Burkhard Walter) – bis heute
2006 – Camera Obscura, Wiesbadener Fototage, Galerie Pokusa
2008 – Kraj, Galeria der Ort, Berlin
2008 – Kraj, Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej, Opole
2009 – Mission Mars (mit Wanda Kossak), Fotografie, Fleischmann, NY
2009 – Camera Obscura, Fotografie, Installation, PH Ludwigsburg
2010 – Fotografie, Installation, Star Gallery, Böblingen
2010 – Camera Obscura, Fotografie, Installation, Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie
2011 – Camera Obscura (mit Marek Pozniak), Galeria FF, Łódź
2011 – Camera Obscura 2005/1-inf (mit Burkhard Walter), Gedok Galerie, Stuttgart
2012 – THE 7th DAY, Internet-Projekt – bis heute
2012 – Camera Obscura, Labirynt, Frankfurt/Oder
2013 – 750 Bilder für Sindelfingen – Ein Kunst- und Mitmachprojekt der Bürger für Sindelfingen (mit Martin Hein)
2013 – Dialog der Städte, Galerie der Gruppe GRAZ, Regensburg
2013 – Edition 1959, KUNSTRAUM SCHWIFTING, Schwifting
2013 – Vermessung der Zeit, Kunstkabinett der WMF-Fischhalle, Geislingen
2014 – Vermessung der Zeit – Camera Obscura, Literaturhaus Stuttgart
2014 – Der 7. Tag: Silber, Lavendel, Asphalt, Sonne und Zeit, THE 7th DAY, TEDxStuttgart
2015 – THE 7th DAY, Camera Obscura – Orte des Übersetzens, Ljubljana
2015 – EDITION – Weil der Stadt 100/2015 (mit Thomas Hahn-Klinger), Wendelinskapelle, Weil der Stadt
2016 – Wystawa „Światło – czuła“ im Rahmen des Fotofestivals in Łódź
2017 – 700 Tage Metzingen – Camera Obscura Mapping (mit Ulrich Koch), Metzingen
2019 – Now and Forever – Heliography for my sons, Festival Fotografii “Interphoto”, Galeria BTL, Białystok
2023 – Camera Obscura – Obscure Welten, Stern Sindelfingen

Awards

The project “No Words” was nominated for the Felix Schoeller Photo Award in 2023 in the category “German Peace Prize for Photography.”
Herrenberger Straßengalerie Award, 2022
Herrenberger Straßengalerie Award, 2019
Złota Sowa Polonii (Polonia Golden Owl) in the category of Visual Arts, 2014
Herrenberger Straßengalerie Award, 2009