Michal Solarski + Tomasz Liboska

'Cut It Short' an autobiographical story about transition between boyhood and adulthood, about friendship, and the passing of time for which photographers Michal Solarski and Tomasz Liboska return to their shared boyhood in a small Polish town and, using staged photography, recreate long ago memories with the help of two teenage boys. We come from a little town of more or less four thousand people, in the southern edge of Poland. This is the place where twenty years ago, both of us were coming of age. It was nothing unusual, growing up is a process everyone goes through and there are certain things we all must encounter and discover at some point or another. People of a certain generation find themselves going through the same fads and trends as fashion, attitudes and politics enter our awareness. Well, at least that’s what we think. It was the early 90’s, and if you really wanted to be cool, there was only one way – to declare war on your hairdresser, wear anything stripy and dive into the very depth of the Grunge revolution. All that counted was our friendship and our dreams. And always, while listening to another new CD, somewhere in between the first and second bottle of cheap wine, that absolute certainty of having our lives under control was coming back. Time had stopped. But, before we learned the rules of the game, it was already over. Fate pushed to the front row unannounced. It wasn’t the first time fate had played unfairly. We happened to choose different schools, we started to eat burgers and to visit hairdressers from time to time. Both of us went to find our own happiness far from the little town we once used to call ‘home’. The title ‘Cut it Short’ refers to the old tradition in Slavic cultures called ‘Postrzyzyny’. Young boy’s hair is cut as a pledge of obedience and an entrance into manhood; a ‘coming of age’ of sorts. The custom is still being practiced in some circles as a kind of symbol of obeying the rules.