Tomasz Machciński is the author of a monumental series of photographs, created from 1966 until his death in 2022. His oeuvre comprises over 22,000 meticulously posed self-portraits in which he personifies real and fictional characters. The selection of 507 original prints in MSN’s collection covers the first four decades of Machciński’s work, during which he remained faithful to black-and-white analog photography. His compositions reflect traditional portraiture conventions, while also alluding to the aesthetics of film publicity stills.

Machciński lived and worked in Kalisz, and remained outside the art circuit for most of his life, working as a precision mechanic. Nonetheless, his art seamlessly corresponds with contemporaneous trends in global art, particularly experiments by artists from the Pictures Generation (e.g. Cindy Sherman) and the New York queer and camp performance art scene (e.g. Jack Smith). Their reflection on the relationship between image and identity in the era of mass culture, as well as numerous allusions to Hollywood aesthetics, find a unique counterpart in the art of Machciński, whose pioneering project reveals the performativity and fluidity of every identity.

Machciński’s medium was his own body: non-normative and marked by a number of illnesses. While photographing his performances-for-camera, he exposed or camouflaged the flaws of his physiognomy, while freely instilling it with meaning and taking control of the viewer’s gaze. He could either present as Marlene Dietrich, or a disgusting satyr. Machciński’s work clearly has an existential dimension. The artist explained: “I don’t use wigs or tricks, but I exploit everything that is happening with my body, such as hair regrowth, loosing teeth, illnesses, aging.” Machciński’s project is thus an atlas of humanity in all its richness, and simultaneously—an atlas of one, particular man. “The work of art is me—Tomasz Machciński.”

[Z.P.-C.]