Artist Chad Glass

I met Sacramento-born storyboard artist and co-owner of ANKA Gallery Chad Glass at one of the Stephen Mitchell's Elysee Wednesday meetings at Caffe Primo at Sunset Plaza. Since I love to play the piano and currently don't have one Chad Glass caught my attention when he showed us drawings of an abandoned piano that he had seen sitting on the corner of a street. Therefore, we started communicating over FACEBOOK through which following conversation came up.


Chad Glass: You seem to like art and artistic things, what is some of your favorite types of artwork? Are you an artist?


Simone Kussatz: I'm a journalist who writes about art. I'm also a creative person. I feel good, if I take pictures and if I do a painting here and there or put things together like in a collage, but I'm not an artist the way we define artists in Germany, which is someone who does this on a professional basis and makes a living from it. But then I'm a writer and I do this on a professional basis and some people consider writers to be artists. My favorite type of art? That's not an easy question. I can tell you what I don't like. I don't like kitch and tacky things. I don't like sexually provocative or aggressive art, exploiting the body. That doesn't mean I don't like nudity, but it needs to be shown in a certain way. I'm someone who appreciates subtleness, depth and art that has some kind of a higher meaning - perhaps a humanitarian element. I like to see emotions and the human condition in general. If it's relevant to world events, I like that too. I don't know... it needs to intrigue me.

Chad Glass: I draw storyboards here in LA and have an art gallery in Portland, Oregon. I co-own it and founded it. I also show my own work there. It is here: http://www.ankagallery.com/

Simone Kussatz: Thank you... I'll look it up. I liked the abandoned piano you had drawn and showed at Stephen Mitchell's Elysee on Wednesdays.

Chad Glass: Thanks. Those drawings mean a lot to me and are highly symbolic.

Simone Kussatz: Can you say a bit more about that? In which way are they symbolic?

Chad Glass: It is death. It is a musical instrument that will never make music again. Its physical body was destroyed and it passed into another form, into a pile of wood several weeks thereafter.

Simone Kussatz: very nice. I can completely relate to that.

Chad Glass: If you've ever seen someone die there is a beauty in it as well as an ugliness. The piano was beautiful in its last days, with its insides exposed, the beautiful craftsmanship, the amazing work and sculptural forms of its mechanisms. But is was at once ugly in its death throes and destruction. The forces destroying it were hostile to it and to life. Life itself is brutal and this physical world is hostile.

Simone Kussatz: I've not watched someone taking his or her last breath, but I've seen my grandfather before the stages of death, and my little brother when he was dead. And the idea of an autopsy after death, cutting one's body open and looking at all the organs, makes me now think about the inside of the piano you drew. An autopsy is a last look at our amazing machine and the mechanism that takes care of us - the brain that sends us all the messages how to move our arms and legs, etc, the heart that pumps the blood to the lungs. And then all of a sudden this machine stops working and withers. It's difficult to find sense in it. Therefore I could not agree more with you about life being brutal and the physical world being hostile, trying to cover up these facts and feelings by bombarding us with superficiality.

Glass Well: Yes the body is a machine, a shell. When it is dying and is then dead the idea of it being only a vessel is very clear. It is unequivocal. Whatever was "in it" is definitely not there anymore.

Simone Kussatz: Thank you for our conversation. Shall the piano be a symbol for all the people who lost their lives during the tsunami. An image of a beach with abandoned pianos comes to my mind... what a quiet and long and sad sound.

Chad Glass: That is a very beautiful and lushly melancholic image. Thank you.


Simone Kussatz: I forwarded my link to my friend and colleague, art critic Peter Frank.. This was his response: "Vielen Dank! I like his drawings, both for subject and for form...."

Chad Glass: Simone, I continue my gratitude and thanks for your article about my drawings. I am grateful for your attention in this matter.


Simone Kussatz: And thank you for creating something that has personal meaning to me... thinking about abandoned pianos, makes me now also think about abandoned people and abandoned talents. I love to see your drawing also as an image of an abandoned soul... and in that also lies beauty and ugliness..

Chad Glass: Excellent, it is all of that.

Interview with Indian photographer Manjari Sharma

Interview with Manjari Sharma conducted over the phone: Los Angeles - Mumbai

The New York city based photographer Manjari Sharma is one of the artists that is currently represented at Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City along with American photographer Steve Fitch. Born in Mumbai, the 31-year-old Sharma just returned from Santander in Spain, where she was invited to coordinate the photo entries for Espacio Nudage - a multi disciplined event, dedicated to emerging talent in design. Trained in India and the US, Sharma’s work has been published in numerous international and national magazines and newspapers, including the Times of India, Geo magazine and PDN (Photo District News). Her work has also been used on a Pinguin book cover. In addition she helped to research a National Geographic Project based in India, was a guest at India’s CNBC, and a 2009 winner of the Strand photo contest in New York.

Simone Kussatz: In both of your series, “Shower” and “Water”, of which some of your works are currently exhibited at Kopeikin Gallery water plays a key role. Can you tell us more about that?

Manjari Sharma: Both those projects were photographed six months apart. Both were not planned, but it was hindsight that made me do them. As far as the Shower series is concerned, to begin with, it's very rare that one has a window in a bathroom in New York City. So at first, it was a formal and visual thing as I saw this light coming through and felt fascinated what it did to my marble walls in the bathroom. The water falling down on my subjects is what transformed this project.

In Indian culture the water of the Ganges River has a great significance. The holy water as it is said, washes away your sins. The project was about inviting people to come into my shower but interestingly as people showered it almost felt as if it were a confessional. As soon as the water hit their faces and bodies, they started to relax and would often discuss intimate things like relationships with their parents, love lives and moments of their childhood, or life lessons that you wouldn't share at a bar or another public place. In a strange unplanned way the water series in a way was a macro look at the relationship of people with the water and the shower series was a micro look at the same.

Kussatz: Did you tell your subjects in which pose to get?

Sharma: Sometimes it was a natural capture and sometimes I had them do over a pose I just noticed they naturally have.

Kussatz: In your shower series you have people of different ethnicities? Was there any particular purpose for that?

Sharma: I’ve always felt very drawn to multicultural people. Once the project became clear to me, I wanted to capture that personal relationship between people and water and to showcase that to people from all over the world, so that they can relate to that.

Kussatz: Your “Water” series was made on the beaches in Rio de Janeiro. They were shot from this great angle. Were you in a helicopter or standing on top of a mountain?

Sharma: No, I was shooting them from the 17^th floor of a hotel room looking at a private beach. And then there were these men standing in a very isolating position. I can’t swim and felt intrigued by looking at people feeling so comfortable in water.

Kussatz: So they actually didn’t know you were shooting them?

Sharma: No, they had no idea. But you can’t see their faces. It’s more about the form from a distance.

Kussatz: I like the pastel colors. Can you say more about that?

Sharma: I've changed the color palette with Photoshop. I wanted them to have a simpler palette so as to not let the details distract the viewer from the concept.

Kussatz: Did you have a particular reason to shoot in Brazil?

Sharma: No. I was just traveling. I was a bride’s maid at my friend’s wedding. As an artist you have to be prepared to make your art wherever you are. And when the moment strikes you want to be ready to use your tool.

Kussatz: I truly enjoyed your work and also found some beautiful images in your portfolio. I think it’s important to put light on emerging artists. I was wondering who influenced you artistically?

Manjari: I was influenced by a variety of artists. If you look at art your whole life you don’t know what kicked in. But I would say mostly by Irving Penn, but also by Greg Miller. I was his assistant for one year. He’s really great at the relationship with his subjects.

Kussatz: Thank you very much for our conversation. I look forward to meeting you in person for the closing reception at Kopeikin Gallery on February 12^th.

Published in Whitehotmagazine February 2011.

Copyright (c) Simone Kussatz

Photos: Courtesy of the artist

Interview with American sculptor Brad Howe

Appeared in Luxury Life Magazine on January 12, 2011 (Pg. 98/100-103)


http://issuu.com/luxurylife/docs/luxurylife_winteredition_8

Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Pacific Design Center

According to the Oxford dictionary "A genius is a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect." Viewing the compelling compositional, mathematical and architectural sketches of the Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) at MOCA Pacific Design Center, we are not solely exposed to beautiful artifacts, but excerpts from the creative processes of a genius mind.

However, some might ponder why the works of a composer would be exhibited in museums such as the Drawing Center in New York, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal and now at MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles rather than in symphony halls? Or why, instead of looking at sketches, there wouldn't be more outdoor performances such as last year's performance of "Persepolis" in the Los Angeles State Historical Park?

For one thing there has always been a strong link between the visual arts and music. Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, who was himself an accomplished musician, used color in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre, hue with pitch and saturation with the volume of sound. The German writer, Wolfgang von Goethe, once described architecture as frozen music. And Xenakis who used the aural curved surfaces of his first major composition "Metastaseis" as an inspiration for the curved walls of the Philips Pavilion, could have not embodied Goethe's metaphor more literally.

Furthermore, music notation has mostly been hand-rendered, like calligraphy. In Western tradition, there are the five lines of the staff, which look like a grid, with dots representing pitches (high and low) and other configurations symbolizing durations. This per se can be visually beautiful. However, what makes Xenakis' sketches unique is that he was not drawing sound in the common manner, but was working through strategies to apply physics and mathematics as a way to organize sound, using set theory, group and game theory, probability theory, in particular stochastic processes, which he then graphically plotted out. His multi-media works presented on paper often contain tiny handwritten notes in various languages - Greek, French and English - and different ink-colors.

The exhibit at MOCA Pacific Design Center, curated by Sharon Kanach and Carey Lovelace, is compromised of two parts. On the ground floor, the exhibit's narrative begins with the early years of Xenakis, including a family photograph of him with his two brothers and uncle in 1933, Xenakis as a Greek resistance fighter in 1944, a picture of Xenakis at Le Corbusier's studio in Paris, photographs and studies of the Philips Pavilion and the Dominican Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette, a typewritten letter by Le Corbusier to Xenakis stating that Xenakis's services were no longer needed, after the two had a dispute when Le Corbusier neglected to mention Xenakis' assistance in the Philips Pavilion. There are also studies for his first compositions "Metastaseis" and "Pithoprakta".

On the second level the exhibit continues with the hand-drawn double-vector matrix for "Achorripsis", which Xenakis used to illustrate a lecture in 1964 as a Ford Fellow in Berlin. It also features studies for "Terretektorh", "Erikhthon" and "Cendrées", including pages of orchestral scores, a DVD of drawings and calculations for "Pithoprakta" with a musical performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg conducted by Arturo Tamayo. On top there is a virtual presentation of "Poème Électronique", provided by the Virtual Reality & Multi-Media Park in Torino, Italy. One can also see a film with Xenakis working on "Polytope de Cluny" and a video from the collection of the Herb Alpert School of music showing a lecture about music with Xenakis at Mills College. Furthermore, there are studies and photographs of "Polytope de Mycènes", "Polytope de Cluny", "Polytope de Persepolis," and "Polytope de Montréal", as well as various programs for the different events. The exhibit concludes with some of Xenakis unrealized projects, such as his studies for "Cosmic city", "the Reynolds House" and "Cité de la Musique."

Along with the exhibit comes a catalogue (written by Ivan Hewett, Carey Lovelace, Sharon Kanach) with a moving memoir by Mâkhi Xenakis, describing the days with her father in Corsica. Therefore, the exhibit does not only portray Xenakis as the remarkable artist, but also the remarkable human being, who fought against the Nazis and the British and survived many hardships, including the death of his mother at age five, imprisonment, severe physical injury, a life in exile and rejection by the Parisian musical elite - Nadia Boulanger, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger. Yet, he never stopped immersing himself into interdisciplinary studies, from Plato to archaeology, to find his own answers. The exhibit and catalogue also focus on the two people who tremendously impacted Xenakis' career - Swiss architect Le Corbusier and French composer Oliver Messiaen, who told him "You are almost thirty. You have the fortune of being Greek, an architect, and of having studied special mathematics. Take advantage of those things. Do them in your music."

In that sense the exhibit succeeds in getting to the essence of the person Iannis Xenakis, someone who was a lateral thinker, someone who was always "thinking outside the box."

Copyright ©Simone Kussatz
Photos: Courtesy of MOCA Pacific Design Center

Published in Whitehotmagazine January 2011

Interview with Manfred Menz at ROSEARK

The earlier oeuvre of Manfred Menz consists of artworks that deal with social critical subjects such as racism, euthanasia or homelessness in a capitalist society; they take the form of installations or collages with texts from self-written poems or excerpts from screen-plays. However, in the past few years the German born artist has been working with digital manipulation in which he removes the iconic structure from famous architectural landmarks by replacing them with the stark white of photo paper and leaving us with only elements of nature. Some of these works can be currently viewed at ROSEARK in West Hollywood.


Simone Kussatz: Do you rather see yourself as a conceptual artist or photographer?

Manfred Menz: I consider myself to be a conceptual artist, although, I've worked with all kinds of cameras. In the beginning of my second career - I worked in film at first - I did more installations than photography. And when I did photography I used them for collages and added texts to them. Now the photographs at Roseark which are part of “the Invisible Project and Invisible Asia” are a combination of photography and digital work.

Kussatz: What inspired you to create photographs of landmarks that can't be actually seen?

Menz: I started with this work about 10 years ago. My work has two components. They are made out of a conceptual and an emotional part. I was first interested in the emotional part, which was to focus on what has always been there, but we've missed seeing, which is nature around landmarks. Obviously if we decide to take a tourist picture of the Eiffel Tower we want to see the tower, and don't care much about the surrounding nature. So I wanted to see what was there. The other part, the conceptual part, was that digital imaging became popular at that time and although I wasn't much into computer work, I felt fascinated by the idea that it would allow me to alter images in ways that one could never tell what happened to the pictures. Therefore I removed the landmarks. I started with my project in Europe. I went to Germany, London, Paris, and Rome. I took a photograph of one of the oldest landmarks, the Colosseum and later worked in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2007 and 2008, I went to South Korea and Japan.

Kussatz: Since the focus of your work is on nature do your works carry any environmental message?

Menz: There are many messages in my work and I'm always happy, when I discover another one, which I originally hadn't seen. The environmental message as I mentioned earlier is to see things that surround us, yet we've never seen and paid attention to. In regard to the Eiffel Tower I found these four trees that in some way give us an impression of the relation between the landmark Eiffel Tower and the trees. The trees are not very large by nature, and they can be overlooked easily, but they have a wonderful beauty to them, which fascinated me. However at the end of my project, I realized that most nature around landmarks are man-made. Most plants hadn't grown naturally. And that provided another interesting view which is to what extent do we value nature as what it is, or what we wanted it to look like. Therefore, my pictures show how our alter ego presents itself as nature. That's why I call them documents of society's self-portraits.

Kussatz: In your work “Tate Modern” you have these luscious looking trees and a white ground that appears to be from a winter landscape. In your work “Changdeok Palace” we see trees with colors that represent the different seasons also on what seems to be a snow-covered ground. Isn't there a contradiction?

Menz: I only take pictures during the end of April towards mid-May, because that's when we get to see the freshest green in nature. I have about 30 pieces throughout the world; some may look as if they have more than one season due to my removal of everything. I usually use grey for the ground, which enhances the green tone of nature. And that makes it look like cold winter snow. It's a nice reflection on the fresh green. So you may be puzzled, when you first look at it, thinking how it is possible that there is this fresh green in winter. I wasn't aware of that at first and it wasn't planned, but I like that effect. It's an optical illusion. As far as “Changdeok Palace”, it's my favorite image, because it's unique to get a chance to be able to see all seasons at once.

Kussatz: Karl Marx Boulevard (Karl-Marx-Allee) was your first image in this series. Is there any political agenda in this?

Menz: Karl Marx Boulevard is a well-known street in Berlin. It doesn't only bear the name of Karl Marx, but associates his ideology with it. However, my first thoughts were about the painters of the past that dealt with images of alleys lined by rows of trees. They were creating this optical illusion, a sense of infinity, by using a tunnel vision. I liked the perspective. Those two rows of trees are parallel in reality. The conceptual part of this picture is that I removed the remaining traces of all social achievements and capitalistic buildings of our collective awareness. And what I left is perhaps the 21st Century's version of a virtual reality. I'm not a Marxist. Karl Marx said of himself he isn't a Marxist. He also said “Art is not a mirror to held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it” and that's exactly what I think I did.

Kussatz: Can you tell us more about your work in the Korean Demilitarized Zone?

Menz: I worked from the position of the Joint Security Area. I took pictures with a view from the South Korean to the North Korean side, where there was this gigantic watchtower, from where the North Koreans would watch what was happening on the other side. There is a lot of tension with about 2 Million soldiers total on both sides standing face-to-face. In my opinion this is the most dangerous place on planet. Being from Germany that was a divided country for a long time after World War II, I expected to see military equipment or a military environment on the Northern Side. But instead, I rather looked at something that seemed to me like Disneyland. There was this wonderful nature with trees and so forth. And what fascinated me was the relationship between what reality is and what we're made to believe it is. And I think my work shows that.

Kussatz: You mentioned that you came across some difficulties when you took these pictures?

Menz: I needed to get a permit in Panmunjom first and a military escort for my own protection. I used a panorama camera. It took time to set it up. Therefore the circumstances under which I worked were very interesting.

Kussatz: Since the show includes images of Berlin and Korea, did you try to compare the former situation in Germany with the current situation in Korea?

Menz: I would never compare the two political situations or juxtapose them. They are very different from each other. Yet, it's natural for me to be interested in Korea because I know what it looks and feels like to be divided as a country and the meaning of it and how it's being presented. However, Korea was very different from what I thought it would be. It was much tenser, and yet there was this wonderful nature in such a political difficult environment. And then they have this artificial village on the Northern side. Nobody lives there but it looks very impressive, and obviously it's just there to make us believe something that's not real.

Kussatz: Your picture “Rodeo Drive” seems to me the most artificial one in that show.

Menz: It is the most artificial one and it is the most colorful one. There is the illusion that there are these potted plants floating in the air. And it appears to us as if we're standing at a point looking down at the palm trees, although it was exactly the opposite from where I took the photograph. I was actually looking up. And in a way this is how we feel, if we go shopping on Rodeo Drive. We think as if we belong to the top of society by holding a bag from one of the most well-known streets in the world, where it actually is the opposite. It doesn't make us what it appears to be. It's only an illusion.

Copyright © Simone Kussatz

Interview was published in Whitehotmagazine on December 24, 2010.

Images: Courtesy of artist Manfred Menz (right - Karl-Marx Boulevard, Berlin 2003, 36x44; left - Tate Modern, London 2003, 43x39)

Cheryl Ann Thomas "New Work" at Frank Lloyd Gallery

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet,” American poet, Emily Dickinson, once wrote in the 19th century. It is exactly the same awareness of our mortality that American ceramicist Cheryl Ann Thomas toys around with in her new works that are currently showcased at Frank Lloyd Gallery. But more than that, her work is also about aging; the disappointments, the hopes and hardships, the dealing with suffering, all the ups and downs that shape our precious lives. Thomas said, “My work is an intimate and experiential inquiry into fragility and loss; I construct, I sabotage, I reconcile.”

The exhibit is comprised of ten elegant black and soft creamy white-colored sculptures, primarily made out of porcelain, except for two bronze and one stainless steel sculptures. Most of them contain the title Relics and several numbers, which indicate the different parts they’re made of. The simplicity in the titles and the reduction to two colors is a conscious act of the artist. Thomas wanted viewers to bring their own interpretations and experiences to her work. Therefore they almost function like a Rorschach test, where one can project one’s inner dialogue. The majority of sculptures sit individually. The two sculptures Coupled-Relics and Five Relics are installed together. Made in the same manner as her former work, the Santa Monica-born artist created them through the coil-technique, where hundreds of clumps of black, white, and gray clay are hand rolled into thin, ropelike strands and stacked, which were later over-fired.

In Six Relics, one can see what seems to be a hooded black cape with a floating creamy white scarf wrapped around it. The sculpture suggests the mysterious interplay between life and death – perhaps death made an appearance, but life force was stronger and pulled him away. In Threesome Relics, a solely creamy white sculpture, one is exposed to what seems to be a figure that could be an aged man wearing a large straw hat, resting his forehead on his left knee. In contrast to Six Relics, this sculpture presents perhaps a life that has yet been spared from a direct encounter with death.

The beauty in Cheryl Ann Thomas works is their elegance and philosophical content. Like each life entering the world, her oeuvre also seems to have that uncertainty of the outcome.
- Simone Kussatz


Copyright (c) by Simone Kussatz

Published in Art Ltd. March 14, 2011

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1300148521&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

By Simone Kussatz

In this art world jungle where many artists want to outdo each other by using sensationalism, provocation, and high-tech manipulated images, it feels soothing to view the works of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who knew how to create grand effects with a small German-made Leica. Cartier-Bresson’s sense for subtle, aesthetic composition, human dignity, historical relevance and psychological insight can be currently viewed in an exhibit that celebrates Peter Fetterman Gallery’s 20th anniversary. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Eye of the Century displays a collection of photographs created during Cartier- Bresson’s journeys to Belgium, former Yugoslavia, China, England, Greece, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia and the US with a strong focus on life in the 50s and 60s. The exhibit also includes landscape and street scene images of France, portrait photographs of Truman Capote, Alberto Giacometti, and Matisse as well as rare prints including a photograph by Cartier-Bresson taken in Provence about two decades after his retirement, when he'd returned to his first love, drawing.

The picture of children and women in Aquila Degli Abruzzi in central Italy is here too. The women are wearing long black dresses, their heads covered with black bandanas. Some wear aprons and carry cake trays on their heads while walking through the alleys, others are gathered at a plaza. It is an image of a slow-paced life. This high-angle shot exemplifies the influence of painting in Cartier-Bresson’s photography – perhaps the influence of André Lothe with whom he studied in Paris. Geometric forms appear as in cubist paintings or in Lothe’s L’Escale: triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids. A vertical axis created by a balustrade in the lower part of the photo and a building above it, as well as diagonal axes provide the photograph symmetry.

Next to Aquila Degli Abruzzi, there is a photograph of two girls walking through a narrow alley in a long shadow. It was shot in former socialist Sarajevo, the city where Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism have been coexisting for centuries. The image was taken two decades after the city was liberated from the occupancy of German Nazis and seventeen years before the Bosnian war, when Josip Broz Tito was president. The two girls with their braided hair, embracing each other and holding what appears to be school supplies, suggest the quiet and peaceful and political atmosphere at that time.

And then there is a photograph that had never been printed before by a collector until gallery owner, Peter Fetterman, discovered it in an obscure book years ago. It is the image of a fundraiser ball (a very posh event) for Queen Charlotte’s hospital, one of the oldest maternity hospitals in Europe. This high angle shot captures some of the same joie de vivre that Cartier-Bresson so much admired in Hungarian photographer, Martin Munkasci’s work, especially in his photograph of the three African nude boys running into the surf at Lake Tanganyika. Yet, it doesn’t have the spontaneity of the African boys; the action seems much more controlled, which is emphasized by Cartier-Bresson catching the dancing couples positioned in perfect diagonal lines. Due to their moving the image is a bit out of focus, which has some of the effect of an aquarelle blurring.

In Decisive Moment Cartier-Bresson wrote, “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.” In photographs such as Barber Rome (1951) and Brussels, Belgium (1932) those human details are telling a story of absurdity and curiosity. There is the image of a barber standing next to a mannequin head covered with a wig, looking through his showcase touching his bald patch. How does he feel working with hair, while losing his? Or there are the two men in Brussels, one of them looking through a hole of a circus tent, the other with a handlebar mustache and distinctive features looking to the side as if he guards him or is distracted by something that catches his curiosity. What could it be?

The Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a huge political influence under Communism. That becomes obvious in Cartier-Bresson’s photo Mass, Warsaw, 1956. Again shot from a high angle, it shows a group of people herded together with a priest sitting in a hanging chair above them. Since the photo was taken in 1956, the year Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was released from his three-year detainment due to his opposition against communism; it’s possible that the photo showed a service with him.

Published in Whitehotmagazine November 2010.

Copyright © by Simone Kussatz