FANTASY WORLD IN PICTURES | AGNIESZKA LOREK

Agnieszka Lorek’s talent and creativity with costume design, modelling, photography and hand-painted photomanipulation have led to her unique style of creativity being adored around the world.

Sucking you into alternative realms, there is often an inexplicable connection to her photography that can be hard to pinpoint; from its deep relationship with nature, to the fascinatingly surreal manipulations and mesmerising colours.

In an interview she did a while back with Natalia from Beautiful Bizzare Magazine, she was asked: "There is an almost medieval feel to some of your series of photography – why do you choose this style?"

Agnieszka responded: "When I was a little girl, I created in my head stories and I made them real with the children who I invited to create this story with me. I was always a tragic figure who either died out of love, I was an angel with wings tacked, or was waiting for a knight in the enchanted tower. I always managed to organise a group of children who follow my instructions… around a character who already suffered from feelings.

"I know is sound strange but its true! I have no idea where such visions in such a small child [came from], because I was around 4-5 years old. It was holiday time, of course, in an idyllic landscape of forests and streams – because I come from the darkest zone – the city in which there were then only mines, steel mills and industrial plants and millions of people around. So I grew up between two worlds – dreams and grey, the harsh reality of the concrete of the city. I teetered between these two poles," she said.

"I fled to the church time to time, because it was beautiful and there I truly felt myself – [I felt] that in a place like this, I’m close with the Absolute [God]. It was my priority – feel [close to the] Absolute, like Joanna D’arc even. I didn’t know then about her – I just see now exactly same flow and aura of need. To be close to the Absolute. Beautiful music, paintings, sculptures. It was a world to which I longed and which I regarded it as my own.

"As a young child I was studying old oil paintings and studied every particular stroke and implementation. I was in love with these medieval forms. It was all so beautiful – [the opposite to] those I saw on the street around me – millions of uniforms ready to fulfil their duties without questions (people did not ask questions, they [acted as] passive consumers of reality. They dressed the same, copied one another in behaviour – any otherness is perceived through the prism of “mismatch”). I lived so deeply in the world of art and dreams that they had become naturally a part of me."

Step into a new world with Lorek's pictures in our gallery.