Magda BIERNAT

NOI Pictures — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:00:06 +0000

We would like to share the work of Magda BIERNAT.

Magda Biernat was born and raised in Poznan, Poland. In 2002, after obtaining her Masters in Marketing and Management from Adam Mickiewicz University and BFA in Photography from Wielkopolska School of Photography, she moved to United States settling down in Seattle, WA. After two years in the North West, she decided to move to New York and started working at Magnum Photos Inc.
Surrounded by great photojournalistic works at Magnum she turned her interests towards something different, and begun photographing architecture and interiors for a living. Besides freelancing for different architecture offices and design studios, she worked as a Picture Editor at Metropolis Magazine. In 2007 she decided to leave her steady life in New York and took off for a year long trip around the world. While traveling to more than17 countries she worked on her personal projects concerning urban landscape and habitat.
Biernat has been exhibited internationally since 2001 with solo exhibitions in Poland, Belgium and United States. She lives and works in New York City. (source : Biernat’s Website)

She mostly works as an architecture and interior design photographer, but we focused on her personal projects here :

First, a serie called « Inhabited ».
( »Inhabited » is the result of my explorations into the world’s private and public spaces searching for differences and commonalities. Between 2007 and 2008 I spent a year traveling around the world, taking photographs across 17 countries.
The world’s cultures may be very different, but when seen through a consistent lens in terms of simple geometry, the complexities of cultural variation fall away. Here I turn my camera onto the ordinary details of everyday life, past the complexities of race, religion or cultural differences and onto the similarities of the mundane. I look into the quiet spaces where people sleep, wait, or work. My first priority was to examine the design and atmosphere of culturally diverse spaces and as I did so I saw beyond diversity to a consistency in the way we lead our lives.(…) »)

ALL PICTURES © Magda Biernat

Inhabited © Magda Biernat

Another work called « Quietly Forgotten »
( »As an architectural photographer my eye is drawn to the shapes and forms that make up buildings and interiors of all kinds. I am particularly attracted by the mysterious nature of places that have been abandoned, forgotten by people and time. With my camera in hand I go on urban explorations of man-made architecture that once served a purpose and held a promise of a brighter future, yet has been deserted and left to decompose. Now like outcasts the buildings sit unnoticed waiting to be discovered again. »)

Last, but not least, « Units of Separation », shot mainly in Singapore, which we like in particular, as architecture-photography-lovers :
( »In “Units of Separation”, my project is an exploration of the way people maintain their individuality while being part of a collective and how units of space meant to foster communal harmony can actually threaten our sense of community. While a resident may come to know their immediate neighbor, it is possible they may never meet the person living directly above them.(…) »)

See the official website for a wide range of her work.

NOI Features » Photography portfolios

Magda BIERNAT