Short abstract
An exhibition by Patrick Olszowski and Sophie Petit-Zeman, the.gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London SE1 9PH, until 22 February 2004
Rating: ★★★★
Fire. There's a fire and a woman is in there. Getting ready to go out. Meeting another man. Then a photographer leaps off a cliff. Is he out of his mind? You decide. The man is Patrick Olszowski and I am looking at two of his digitally enhanced images in this unusual exhibition.
Olszowski has had panic attacks since his teens. Everyday happenings trigger terrifying changes to his inner world, yet Olszowski also claims that he remained unphased by a gale force seven in the Bay of Biscay. He is also a photographer who uses his art to create images of how he feels.
“People don't see me having a panic attack,” explains Olszowski. “I could say trite things about rainbows and roses, about panic being my own worst enemy while it also opens my eyes.” Instead he spent a year photographing panic.
Olszowski has co-presented the exhibition with Sophie Petit-Zeman, a medical writer who has worked on the Department of Health's anti stigma campaign for mental health. Petit-Zeman accompanies Olszowski's images with lucid physiological explanations. The text is concise, and free of jargon and waffle.
To describe this as a collection of large digital photos alongside text is to minimise its impact and importance. The pair describe their exhibition as “a walk through fear in pictures and words.”
Figure 1.
Patrick: “Just Patrick, no more, no less, no label”
Though deceptively simple, all the photos are beautifully constructed. Many of the pictures, including Orange Leaves and Water and Rainbow, could easily be enjoyed for their aesthetic appeal alone. Others are more provocative, including the first photograph, Patrick. Olszowski's self portrait, half-dressed, head tilted and half out of the frame, shows him holding a blank piece of paper and is accompanied by the explanation “Just Patrick, no more, no less, no label.” It dares you to tag him with a derogatory description. Petit-Zeman affectionately describes Olszowski as a “Labrador puppy.” It is easy to see why. A sense of playfulness as well as fear is evident in most of his photography. Visual metaphors bound off these prints. There is no subtlety here, but it works.
Figure 2.
Man Jumping
What is so refreshing is that the duo communicate what it feels like to have a panic attack without hectoring, without being shrill, and, above all, without being worthy and dull. There is a message, but not a whiff of victimhood.
Several of the photographs have an aquatic theme. Rowing, wading, walking on water (in fact on a submerged plank). Is this how a panic attack feels? Like trying to breathe under water? Petit-Zeman explains that one in four people coming to the exhibition will have first hand experience of what panic attacks feel like. Many feel isolated and helpless. If they feel they are drowning, the resources provided could be a lifeline. The exhibition prominently advertises helplines, websites, and organisations, but despite the table full of leaflets the space still feels infinitely more like an art gallery than a health centre.
This is a highly effective exhibition, one that subtly educates as it entertains. It takes a brave man to put himself and his symptoms on the line and a rare talent to ensure that visitors don't suffer. At the end of the exhibition, I returned to the first picture, knowing what I wanted to write on Olszowski's label: “The nature of Patrick.”