On a film set, the camera is rarely looking at everyone. There are actors in front of it, directors behind monitors, and dozens — sometimes hundreds — of people working outside the frame. In his ongoing exhibition ‘I See You’, Polish cinematographer and photographer Artur Żurawski brings some of those people back into focus.
The exhibition, currently on view at Anant Art presented by the Polish Institute, brings together 40 black-and-white photographs of people Żurawski has encountered while working on film productions and travelling across India, Nepal, Poland and Korea. Divided into six sections, it focuses on directors, actors, crew members and local collaborators, often away from the spectacle of filmmaking itself. Some gaze into his lens; others turn away, disappear into shadows, or are caught in ordinary moments — brooming the streets, resting by a field or waiting between tasks.
The black-and-white photographs, he says, were a personal choice. For Żurawski, colour carries too much information and subjectivity, while black and white is simpler. “Everybody will remember colour in different ways. Nobody will describe the same colour,” he says. “I remember shapes and faces. I don't need colour to tell the story in the portrait. It is always about lighting, about the shadow, not about the colour of the skin.”
A different kind of film set
For Żurawski, photography is a way of “creating a stamp” on a moment in time. In photography, the moment is being transferred “into a longer time”, he says. Having spent days, weeks and sometimes months with the people he photographs, the images are “traces of encounters”.
The photographs now help him “be closer to them” — including those whose work may have placed them far from him on a film set. Especially on Indian film sets, where the scale of a production often means he may not even cross paths with members of his own crew. “You never meet this big group of people in any country,” he says. Filmmaking, he says, is a hard job. “There are days that you are hating people, and then you're loving them,” he says. Thus, photographs become a form of reflection and therapy after a difficult production.
Some of the familiar faces in his frames include actors Anushka Sharma while getting her makeup done; Rani Mukerji, with whom he worked on Mardaani as a cinematographer; the late Pradeep Sarkar, the Mardaani director and Polish filmmaker Wiesław Paluch, with whom he worked on the 2024 film Go Against the Flow.
His camera also turns towards the people who are often furthest from the finished image: gaffers, first assistant directors, production designers, makeup artists, spot boys, security guards and local collaborators. Żurawski identifies them by name, profession and location in the captions, refusing to let them become anonymous figures in the background of someone else’s story. He also believes naming them can make viewers curious — “to make them want to know more about them”.
Between the moving and the still image
Żurawski’s photography is largely documentary, made up of “more random and quick moments of life itself”. He carries his camera almost everywhere, waiting for what he jokingly compares to a fisherman waiting for a fish. “It's better to carry than not to carry. Maybe there will be some fish,” he says.
In the section 'Beyond the Gaze', his subjects often turn away from the camera. In one photograph, a director in Nepal is seen from behind as Żurawski follows him during a recce. Another shows a man sitting on an airport floor like any other traveller, while carrying an entire film’s footage in his bag.
His years behind the camera as a cinematographer also influence how he photographs people. He has shot films across Europe and Asia, including Indian productions such as Sultan, Bhoomi, and Mardaani 3. But he enjoys photography for the freedom and solitude it offers, unlike cinema, which is inherently collaborative. “In photography, I have freedom. I’ll have my camera and I'm deciding everything,” he says.
A life in frames
Żurawski’s first significant encounter with cinema happened when filmmaker Lars von Trier arrived in his hometown to shoot Europa. As a teenager, he photographed the townspeople involved in the production and sent the photographs to von Trier. Decades later, now in his fifties, Żurawski still sees himself in that teenage boy with a camera.
“I’m the same,” he says. “I’m still a shy person. I’m always waiting to make something better. I’m always waiting to read some amazing script.” That desire to keep looking, he says, has not changed.
‘I See You’ is ostensibly about other people, but it also charts Żurawski's own journey through cinema — the directors he has followed, the actors he has worked with, the crews he has depended on and the strangers who briefly entered his frame.
He is wary, however, of telling viewers exactly what the photographs say about him. “This is a question of how you see me as well,” he says. “I’m just making these pictures. I love them and they will stay forever. It’s your job to tell me what you think about them.”
On view at Anant Art Gallery, Block B 5, Safdarjung Enclave, till August 29