If I Could Only Remember - 2017
I was born in 1987, in Krakow, Poland. A date, a place, but already, the outlines blur. At that time, the Berlin Wall was still standing, and my parents were trying to escape. What they didn’t know was that they were witnessing the final tremors of a fading regime.
We left Poland for Germany, spent two years in a refugee camp. Then Canada, for seven years. And finally, Switzerland, which became a kind of anchor point, at least geographically.
“If I Could Only Remember” is an attempt to navigate the fog of my earliest memories. Those before the age of three. A time when memory and fiction are inseparable, when remembering becomes a floating sensation, a feeling more than a fact. It all begins with what I believe to be my first memory: the last day at the refugee camp in Germany, just before we left for Canada. I’m sitting on the edge of a jacuzzi, my father next to me. My mother wraps me in a large towel. There’s a photograph of this moment in a family albums. But what I see, is it the picture, or the memory?
Through this project, I move through these fragments — the ones I lived, the ones I was told, and the ones my mind may have invented to fill in the gaps. It’s a layered memory, accumulating, contradicting itself, rebuilding itself. I shift between what is real and what is imagined, between lived scenes and dreamlike visions. Some images are anchored in the physical world, only to dissolve into something more ethereal. I drift between these two realms, where doubt becomes the driving force: what I believe I remember; is it the truth, or the echo of a story repeated too often?
What I seek to show is a process; the act of reinventing, of reaching for a past I can only grasp through the filters of time, of words, of images.
Ultimately, this work is an attempt to reawaken a scattered memory, to reimagine what may or may not have been. It is an archaeology of the blurred, an emotional reconstruction of a past that slips through my fingers, yet one I refuse to let fade away.
Exhibition UIsan Photography Festival - If I Could Only Remember, - Ulsan, South Korea, May 2023
Digital Exhibition Forum Transfrontalier - Autres Frontières, If I Could Only Remember, February 2021
Shortlist VFG Nachwuchsförderpreis 2018 - If I Could Only Remember, Switzerland, June 2018
Exhibition Revolv One Year Show - Safehouse 1, If I Could Only Remember, - London, England, June 2018
Exhibition Photo London - Somerset House, If I Could Only Remember - London, England, May 2018
Exhibition Swiss Photo Award - Photobastei 2.0, Shortlist - If I Could Only Remember, - Zürich, Switzerland, March 2018
Finalist LensCulture Exposure Awards 2018, If I Could Only Remember, February 2018
Exhibition The Pupil Sphere Groupe Show - If I Could Only Remember, - Leeds, England, February 2018
Exhibition Nuit de la Photo - If I Could Only Remember, - La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, February 2018
Exhibition The Pupil Sphere Groupe Show - If I Could Only Remember, - Glasgow, Scotland, January 2018
Exhibition 73rd Biennial of Contemporary Art, If I Could Only Remember, - La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, December 2017
Exhibition Photoforum Prize Exhibition - Photoforum Pasquart - If I Could Only Remember, - Biel, Switzerland, December 2017
Prize USPP Prize 2017 - If I Could Only Remember, - Vevey, Switzerland, June 2017
Selection of articles about If I Could Only Remember
British Journal of Photography - November 2018 https://www.1854.photography/tag/maciej-czepiel/
Lens Culture Exposure Award 2018 https://www.lensculture.com/articles/maciej-czepiel-if-i-could-only-remember
Swiss Photo Award 2017 http://www.swissphotocollection.ch/project/if-i-could-only-remember/
Forum Transfrontalier https://www.forum-transfrontalier.org/autres-frontieres/maciej_czepiel/
From NE with Love https://fromnewithlove.ch/artiste/czepiel-maciej/
PH Museum https://phmuseum.com/news/searching-for-the-first-memory
