You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. (Ansel Adams)

My name is Paulina Polkowska and I came into this world on 15 June, 1987 in Warsaw (Poland). After graduating in Spanish Language and Literature in Warsaw, I settled in Barcelona on 29 July, 2013, a date that has stuck in my memory, because it marked the beginning of a new stage of my life (one of many).

If I had to define myself right now, I think I would describe myself as a life enthusiast and a nonconformist. I spent the early years of my professional career in the field of translation and interpreting, among other things. I had always liked literature, words and languages for their ability to build bridges for people to communicate. However, after working as a freelancer in the sector for a few years, I began to feel that what I was doing was not completely fulfilling for me. I needed other incentives: above all, interacting more with people, doing something that was more personal and creative, experimenting, exploring, travelling… I felt as if words were not enough to express myself.

It is then that photography came, in late 2013, although since I was eighteen I had sensed a passion for portrait, documentary and street photography. Upon turning twenty-seven, amidst a deep existential crisis that intertwined with an illness and lots of loneliness, I felt the inner obligation to ask myself about the meaning of my life, what I was doing with it and in it. More than anything else, I felt the urge to ask myself who I was. The events that unfolded during my lifetime and, later, my personal interpretation of them, my personality and my sensibility, all led me to build my own inner world, often filled with pain, disappointment, anxiety, sadness and hope, which coupled with the feeling of not being able to express with words everything I had inside me. Because of that, photography has been a kind of therapy, an expression of myself, with its power to describe what seems indescribable. I realised that, sometimes, words greatly distorted reality and were hollow when I needed to talk about emotions and feelings. I realised that others would not understand us if we did not first understand ourselves. And while we failed to properly communicate with our mouths, there were other ways left to explore: writing, movement, music, photography… All that to reconnect with oneself and, by extension, with the universe, in order to live in harmony.

In my education as a photographer, I have attended different schools, among them the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya. However, the real turning point for me came in June 2016, when I met Jordi Oliver (a great professional and an even better person), an inspiring documentary photographer who taught me how to photograph from the guts, something for which I will be eternally grateful to him. Thanks to him, I also discovered that documentary photography is what I am most passionate about: the power to tell stories through images, conveying feelings and emotions, different realities, being involved in social issues and at the same time reconnecting with nature, breaking the conventions, meeting ordinary people and, most especially, seeing beauty where I had not searched it before: on each face, in each place, in each object, in each landscape and each silence. In short, to distil the soul of what I observe, to show that beauty is anywhere I want to find it and that everything is perfect. Probably because of that, in most of my work I choose color and light and its intensity, since that is how I tend to see life: full of colour, intensity and opportunities. Black-and-white photography comes in handy to me whenever I want to delve into melancholy and nostalgia, which have always been present in me as well and which I love just as much as happiness (they are, ultimately, part of the same, shadows and lights).

I do not look for photographs, I simply find them. What I do are not posed portraits, invented or prearranged stories or scenes. Instead, I take the opportunity to comment on whatever I find and to share my view of it.

I believe absolutely all of us have a story to tell and no life is uninteresting. I feel that my vocation is to convey my view of the world and to share its harmony and beauty, which are always in the eye of the beholder. For me, these two concepts go beyond physical traits. It is a matter of being authentic.

From the February 2019 (butit had begginings through the all 2018) I have started my second life proyect: Fotografía y Conciencia (Photography and Awarness and Consciousness) dedicated to photography focused on personal development, therapeutic area and spirituality. You can find more information about it in my seocnd website: www.paulina-polkowska.com

Thank you for your time and hope to see/listen you soon.