The photography of Lukasz Wierzbowski — a photographer and social psychology student currently living in Wroclaw, Poland — unsettles. His pictures feature gorgeous young women in the woods or at home or on the street; wherever they are, their figures alone occupy the frame. Draping themselves across tree branches, grassy lawns, or unkempt bedspreads, these women seem bored and frustrated with the viewer’s gaze — in almost every image, the face of the model is turned away, obscured, or simply facing the camera with eyes staunchly shut. There is something uncanny about these pictures; looking at them, the viewer feels implicated as voyeur into someone else’s private world.
     Despite the fact that his work appears rich with implied meaning, Wierzbowski explains that he doesn’t have any kind of artist statement: “The only thing I can say [about my work] is that I feel strongly attached to this certain mood, feeling of in-between where not everything is the way it seems.” Indeed, Wierzbowski’s images bring to mind that old joke: “I woke up this morning and discovered that someone had stolen all my stuff and replaced it with exact replicas.” While the world in these pictures looks just as we expect it to, something in the atmosphere just doesn’t feel right.