Andrzej Pluta was born in Poland and is currently residing in Canada. His unique photographic works are in many private and public collections worldwide including Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and actress Susan Sarandon.
As well as his commercial work, Pluta has worked for over 27 years in fine art photography. He attended a fine art photography school as a young man.
Because of the internal political situation in his country in 1970, he emigrated and first traveled to Rome and then later to Canada, moving from Toronto to Montreal and then Vancouver undertaking personality and editorial fashion photography. He then left for Los Angeles where he stayed for five years working on album covers, fashion ads, and celebrity portraits before returning to Canada.
His work is created by using a Sinar 8×10 camera along with, for many of the compositions, a Carl Zeiss Mirotar lens, of which there are only about 25 in existence. Using unconventional and complex lighting techniques, the image is exposed to 8×10 Fujichrome color film. There is no darkroom or computer work and no retouching of the original color transparency.
He developed his own unique style through experimentation. Each series of work produced brings about imaginative abstractions, varied color palettes, and unusual camera techniques.
What is it that flowers mean in the space they occupy? Why do they stop us up short and call us to a halt with their soundless last syllable? Is it their resolute sense of self, their undiluted wholeness? Maybe instead, it’s their sense of imminence. Maybe it’s about color–they are blue: gentian, cobalt, peacock, lapis lazuli or sky; they are red: vermilion, carmine, garnet, blood; their yellow: sun, honey, butter, lemon; their green: peridot, parakeet, water, acid, emerald, lime.
They are the first things. They are the beginning point, the springboard for metaphor, the objects to which other things are likened. Or try dance and sway, harmony and equilibrium, surprise and splendor; try cool touch to fever, bulb, and trumpet, spikes and velvet, surcease and thrust, pulse and throb. Think of nettles and roses, stamens, pistils and swords, pods and pulp, nectar and scent, poppy and yield, balm and yes, beauty.
Andrzej Pluta has had nearly 20 solo exhibitions in the Steuben Gallery in New York since 1990 and was commissioned numerous times by Steuben to photograph their limited edition glassware.
European Exhibitions:
Warsaw – Stara Gallery
Antwerp – JCJ Haans Gallery
Brussels – European Parliament
Sofia, Bulgaria – Museum of Earth and Man
US Exhibitions:
New York – Steuben Gallery
Westchester, New York – Madelyn Jordan Gallery
Washington, D.C. – Fraser Gallery
