Life on Assignment

Kuba, or perhaps better, Dąbrowski, as a serious curatorial text should call him, always has a camera around his neck. It doesn’t really matter whether he is on assignment or off the clock; he keeps taking pictures and documenting what’s around him. Sometimes it’s a fashion show of one of the most prestigious houses in the world, other times a rapper he used to listen to when he was younger. But it could just as well be a very political scribble in the Paris metro, or three pairs of grey socks drying on a radiator in his Airbnb, or even just, “look, the light is so nice here!”

Taken together, these images form a bigger picture of Kuba’s world, and this exhibition offers a glimpse into perhaps its least known part: his life on assignment, or rather those two or three months each year when he is away from home, reporting from Fashion Weeks for WWD, the oldest fashion magazine in the world.

These intense periods of time have their own rules. They place any photographer in a temporary cosmos that they share with other “guns for hire.” You go through the same security checks, overbooked flights, public transport strikes, and long-distance quests with a camera in a city that isn’t yours. You build relationships, make friends, share meals, Airbnbs, good moments, rainy days, and advice about photo gear. You also get to know different cities, find your way around, discover favourite bars and secret spots, and learn about their people. And then, after a few weeks, you return home, to your family and to your routine, and live your “normal life” until… the next season. Then the madness begins again. Is it spring–summer or autumn–winter? Who knows.

Kuba once told me that taking personal pictures while on assignment keeps him sane from the work pictures. It sounded strange to me, because there isn’t much difference between these two “categories,” at least in the way he approaches them: with endless curiosity, disarming kindness, a pinch of humor, and a camera with a rather wide-angle lens. Maybe that’s why the distinction between his work and his life during Fashion Weeks is so hard to grasp. You never quite know whether an image is part of the assignment or just Kuba on his way home after yet another 20-kilometre-long day of shooting street style for WWD.

Kuba is as interested in Fashion Week glamour as he is in local everyday life, and especially in what emerges from the meeting of the two. What is an outfit, and what is a costume? Is this a catwalk look or personal style? Are they Fashion Week attendees or simply stylish passersby? Is this a front-row guest or a waiter from the bar across the venue? Does it really matter?

Kuba sees much more than the surface. He looks at society in a specific time and place, notices dynamics and behavioural patterns, finds analogies from the past, and documents it all, often with subtle nods to the history of photography. One might say his approach is democratic, as he treats everything with equal attention. I’d rather say it’s intelligent and deeply humane. Maybe that’s why, even if you don’t know him well, you tend to call him Kuba rather than Dąbrowski.

When we meet in Milan or Paris during these busy weeks, Kuba is usually very tired and keeps apologising for not being able to articulate his thoughts clearly. I rarely notice it, maybe because I also struggle to speak Polish smoothly after so many years away. Our conversations become a kind of improvised mix of languages and a completely chaotic train of thought about the world, politics, the fashion industry, popular culture, photography, cameras, getting older, and everything in between.

Kuba studied both sociology and photography, so talking to him, as the younger generation would say, hits different. He knows. His observations come not only from photographic instinct or experience but also from history, theory, and case studies. He can give an almost academic context to what surrounds him, but never in a didactic or heavy-handed way. He doesn’t try to teach anyone; he simply shows how he sees things, leaving it up to us to ask questions.

When he asked me if I’d like to curate this exhibition, I thought, “Wow, sure!” and then decided I would try to summarise everything we’ve been talking about over the years and put it together in a nice form. Maybe in this case a curator is closer to an art director?

I don’t know. We’ll talk about it next season.

Kuba and Piotr are both photographers and have known each other for more than ten but fewer than twenty years.

Life on Assignment
Kuba Dąbrowski