When looking at photographs and images, we have learnt to keep a sceptical distance. We know that an image is always an interpretation, a manipulation of what is actually there, only one of many conceivable or possible representations of a specific situation. It is never a neutral and factual reflection of reality.
In Aneta Grzeszykowska's series 'Negative Book', the usual parameters of analogue photography are displaced. Many of the photographs were taken during a residency the artist spent in California with her partner and child. Ostensibly, these are private pictures of an interesting and exciting stay. But the prints have two distracting elements. Firstly, the photographs have been printed as negatives instead of positives, so that everything which is bright in reality, reflecting a lot of light, appears dark in the photographic print, and what is dark suddenly appears light. Secondly, in quite a number of photographs the artist has also painted her face and body with black paint. In the negative print the effect is to make her face and body appear white.