Maciej Czepiel

Laureate of the Prix Brigitte Mavromichalis – Musée d’art du Valais

• 1987, based in Neuchâtel
• Portfolio
• Website: maciejczepiel.ch
• Instagram: @maciejczepiel

I Can Remember It For You

Photograph, text, 2025

This work is constructed around a correspondence of letters between my former self and my present self. I enable a reflection on the pictures in my family albums in a contexte of migration, and try to understand how memory constructs our individual and collective stories through family pictures that captured a somehow tragic moment in time.
One of those pictures is a photograph of my mother and I, in what, as a child, I didn’t know were refugee camps in Germany. I recognize my mother in it, but something is off. I’ve always thought I was holding an apple in this photo.
This research allowed me to have a different reading of images according to what I know about them.
Yes, it was something else I was holding in reality, just a glimpse of my history, and that’s enough. Today, I can get deeper into what made my past.