For Paris-based photographer Lukasz Pukowiec, youth has always been connected with style experimentation. Now working with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Isabel Marant and JW Anderson, Lukasz grew up in a small village of Mszana in southern Poland and recalls navigating various subcultures as a teenager. This feeling of being brave while figuring it all out is at the core of his latest project I Am From Here, which documents a new generation of Polish teenagers.
“I had this project in mind for a long time but I didn’t know how to start. I just wanted to do something very personal and close to my heart,” the photographer remembers. “Whenever I’m in Poland I‘m always impressed by the young generation. They’re so beautiful and so unique, and I wanted to show them to a broader audience.”
Lukasz started shooting the project in early summer 2022 in Warsaw. He cast a few people on Instagram, and later worked with a friend and collaborator to cast people on the street. “I just used my intuition and looked for original people with this shine in their eyes, very different personalities,” he adds. “Most of them have never shot with a photographer before. I really like to shoot new faces, it’s amazing to see innocence and youth,” he continues. “Working with models is completely different; they mostly know their body, angles, poses that clients like. Street casting is way more natural.”
Lukasz’ portraiture for this project resembles early-era Wolfgang Tillmans, or work by Alasdair McLellan shot in the North of England, or the open-hearted honesty of queer Brazilian photographer Guilherme da Silva in his latest zine Overture. We can’t help but experience a moment of serenity, transported to a summer’s day in Warsaw, captivated by the expressions, body language and style of young people in front of the camera. After years of working in fashion, he says, Lukasz has come to place particularly great value on creating imagery that captures his subjects in a direct, authentic light – this, therefore, became the directive for this project.
“Fashion shoots are mostly about clothes and team direction,” Lukasz says. “Sometimes you feel that you have to do something personal to keep your passion. I had many ideas for this project, and in the beginning I wanted to invite a stylist, but now I see that the project would have lost a lot without people showing their personal style. The first part I did with my friend, hairstylist Pawel Solis, but we kept everything very natural.”
When asked the secret of captivating portraiture, the photographer shares that it’s all in the eyes: “Eyes say a lot. They can tell you all about character, especially when you’re taking a picture of someone without modelling experience. But I feel that you also have to create a comfortable space for people to trust you.”
Lukasz’s own background plays an important part in the project. While global pop cultural depictions of coming of age are becoming more and more homogenised, he approached this series with a nuanced empathy filtered through his own memories of being a teenager in Poland. Unlike some projects set in Eastern and Central Europe, Lukasz consciously sought to avoid stereotypical settings and tropes – the region’s stern, post-Soviet architecture, for example. Instead, he zooms into the new generation’s quest for identity – something shared by their peers worldwide.
“Warsaw is amazing and changes so fast,” the photographer says. “Poland is a very international country now, so I‘m always trying to encourage people and change their minds about old stereotypes. I hope this project will help. I’m so happy that it’s now taken as normal to express yourself however you like. It’s something I’ll always support teenagers in doing, because when I was younger I met many people who wanted to make me feel bad about my crazy frosted hair tips or my XXL jeans. This project is about being brave and being yourself.”
Credits
All images courtesy of Lukasz Pukowiec