Andrzej Pluta

Limited Edition Archival Pigment Prints

Magic Gardens

Andrzej Pluta was born in Poland and currently lives 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, undertaking personality and editorial fashion photography. He moved to Los Angeles 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 x 10 camera along with, for many of the compositions, a Carl Zeiss Mirotar lens, of which there are only ~25 in existence. Using unconventional and complex lighting techniques, the image is exposed on 8x10 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.

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.

“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 colour–their blue: gentian, cobalt, peacock, lapis lazuli or sky; their red: vermilion, carmine, garnet, blood; their yellow: sun, honey, butter, lemon; their green: peridot, parakeet, water, acid, emerald, lime. They are 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 splendour; 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."

- Meeka Walsh, Border Crossings Art Magazine