The Sound of Two Songs

A book of photographs of Poland, by photographer Mark Power. 2010. Published to coincide with the first exhibition of The Sound of Two Songs: Photographs by Mark Power, at the international Cultural Centre Gallery as part of the Photomonth in Krakow, May 2010. "This Book is the evidence of a love affair, but a relationship that offers no logical explanation. I have no familial ties with Poland, no personal history I needed to explore or resolve. And yet I felt compelled to return again and again. Why should that be? I know that photography has a long and not particularly edifying history of chasing the exotic, but I am equally suspicious of those who claim to be able to make more sense of a foreign country simply by spending a lot of time there. Yet for me Poland is exotic. I am at once troubled and excited by this; to see a place in this way is contrary to everything I would normally aspire to in a photographic project. And what is the point? Can someone from elsewhere tell someone from here anything about their homeland that they don't already know? Poland is a beautiful country. Poland is an ugly country. And, just as its ugliness can be profoundly beautiful, so its beauty, or that which we might be encouraged to appreciate as such, can be downright unsightly. Poland is a land bursting with visual contradictions. It's like listening to several melodies at once, to the point where it is impossible to hear anything clearly. I believe the musical term for this is contrapuntal. The results are oddly compelling..." Mark Power, abstract from introduction