Growing up in post-WWII Warsaw, Kashka Vranken née Skibinska, was exposed to influences of the Cold War and Western Culture in a controversial and grave socialistic society. A lot of things were on the blacklist-long hair, pop music, contemporary reading material and so-she deemed herself- was she. After applying unsuccessfully to the prestigious Warsaw Academy of Arts, she decided that there was no place for her in her native Poland.
The two main influences on Kashka’s black and white period included the atmospheric films of Akira Kurosawa as well as the subversive eye of Bill Brandt, whose work helped both shape her perspective and guide her in finding her own photographic voice.
During her time at the Central School of Art in London-now Central Saint Martins- she spent most of her time in the dark room. She worked with a borrowed Mamiya Sekor Camera to capture her subject . It was during this time that she refined her black and white aesthetic, working with the human form to bring out the best of it’s natural design.
She was mainly interested in capturing the male form as a means of counteracting the male gaze, (as well as highlighting it’s beauty at a time when homosexuality was still very much a taboo topic in public society. )
Through observing and abstracting the human form Kashka’s work reminds us of the connectedness we have with nature, that we are part of a bigger picture.
Kashka’s photograph’s challenge the way we experience the minutiae of the natural world and invites us to engage with natural elements in a whole new way and connects us to a world that we don’t necessarily see with the naked eye.
Her work is a celebration of nature’s complexity, connecting the micro to the macro
Here we are taken into the third phase of Kashka’s photographic career, in which she comes to using both digital and colour to further investigate the hidden intricacies of the natural world. Working with macrolens technology has enabled her to dig beneath the layers and discover new ways of abstracting nature to again accentuate the beauty of its organic structures.
