“I try to get out of my comfort zone all the time, and I get inspiration from pretty much everything – from a book I read, from a walk, from a random conversation, a mural, or maybe even more from what feelings something triggered in me and how I can tell others about it through my point of view. I am mostly inspired by places,” says photographer Lukasz Spychala to the Phoblographer in an interview. We’ve featured Lukasz before in an interview, but we’re so in love with his work and how he’s evolved as a photographer that we needed to give him the spotlight again. And when he walks around, he pays a lot of attention to his surroundings, the memories they evoke, the emotions in him, etc. This is the type of inner connectivity that so many photographers yearn for when they’re in a creative slump.
All images by Lukasz Spychala. Used with permission. Visit his website and Instagram page to see more of his work. Want to have your work featured? Click here!
“My photography is a sincere journey into myself, constant research and experimentation.”
Lukasz Spychala
Lukasz, in many ways, sounds like what many photographers want to be. He strives to make new things. “Maybe it’s unrealistic these days, but I try to create something new so that I can look at myself in the mirror and call myself a true creator, not a reproducer,” he says, in words that sound all too familiar to all of us. “On the other hand, I try not to be inspired and look at the photos of others around me who are taking pictures. I believe that they can very quickly get stuck in our subconscious and make us try to reproduce them, even involuntarily.” So what does he do? He looks at the photography books of various historical photographers instead. Additionally, he takes in paintings and the mise en scene within them all.
Beyond that, he’s inspired by the models that he photographs. He feeds off of the person, their energy, how they’re affected by the location, the idea, etc.
He’s constantly trying to raise the bar for himself, too. He references his “Multiverse” series as a reference to his practices here. “This series takes us on a journey through time and space, revealing the remarkable intergenerational differences that have arisen as a result of rapid technological development,” he tells us, in a very beautiful and thought-provoking way. “For this shoot, I set the scene and provided each character with his or her separate zone in which they function on a daily basis. Each actor symbolizes a different generation of people.” He continued to explain the series to us.
The woman, with curly hair, symbolizes the oldest generation that grew up without the virtual world. There is also an athlete in the photos, symbolizing the generation that has experienced both the analog and digital worlds. In addition to this figure, we also find a red-haired girl symbolizing the youngest generation that was born in the era of the digital revolution. Also appearing in the frames is a mysterious silver figure symbolizing the technology that more or less runs through each generation.
Although we all currently live at the same time, it feels as if we are functioning in completely different dimensions. The “Multiverse” series, therefore, encourages us to reflect on the impact of technology on our lives and encourages us to seek a point of balance between the real and virtual worlds.
Lukasz Spychala
There’s often a lot of work involved for Lukasz and his images. It involved stylists, lighting, set designers, etc. And he shoots analog, so it’s not like this is all done in Photoshop. He tells us that much of this can be very exhausting because of the setup, cleaning, modifications of set design, environmental conditions, etc. “When I press the shutter button, it brings me joy beyond description,” he says. “In turn, watching the developing negative gives me inner peace and a sense that I am trying to grow in my greatest passion.”
With all this said, Lukasz is a true photographer in the sense of the word. And to that end, he finds AI imagery to be just another tool. In his eyes, it’s a big paradigm shift similar to the switch from analog to digital. However, he doesn’t consider AI imagery to be real photography, and instead just a separate category of the visual arts.
So what separates him? “When photographing, I have a certain vision,” Lukasz shares. “I shape my entire photo plan tangibly with my hands or with a message to the model. For me, creating photos with AI is similar, which starts at the level of someone else’s idea.” He explains that there needs to be a creative vision first — and the the actualization of the final product is just achieved in different ways. And overall, he’s not drawn to working with AI.
