Fotografia reklamowa a pamięć twórcy. Fotokompozycje Ryszarda Horowitza

Abstract

The subject matter of the present article is advertising viewed not from the communicative perspective but as a message, which through influencing our direct actions, i.e. behavioural changes, in the broader perspective consolidates and modifies the sphere labelled as the cultural sphere. The message that is treated as an icon of consumer culture may also be analysed separately from the practical and economic goal. The message isolated from that context could function as a piece of art, which at the same time tells more truth about the world, the creator and his/her feelings than the one we call a document. Richard Horowitz’s photographical compositions are perfect illustrations of that phenomenon. In his works, paradoxically, metamorphosis and metaphor, which carry the meaning surplus and are creative not merely as discourse ornament but authentic information as proved by Ricoeur in „Metaphor and Symbol”, are the ways of expressing the truth about the world. Photography, which is ambiguous in its nature and which cannot be described as clear- structured, may simultaneously function in different ways. Hence, independently of its commercial purpose, Horowitz’s works are unusual memoirs, alternative methods of interpersonal communication, which at the same time belong to the area of both mass and intrapersonal communication. The artistic output confronted with an unusual biography allows us to formulate a thesis that although Horowitz is perceived as an artist of the 21st century, a forerunner of his epoch, the subject matter of his famous photographical compositions is frequently the first half of the 20th century - childhood, youth and experiences connected with the Holocaust. The works of Horowitz, who is called “juggler” and ’’the author of empirical landscapes”, have the memoir character, because two equal recipient attitudes or “pragmatic instructions” may be applied with reference to them. The former is linked with promotion, or auto-promo-tion, the latter - autobiography, not covering, however, the parable of supraindividual nature of the works.