Damian Konopacki (b. 1999, Poland) is a photographer who grew up queer in West Pomerania – a flat, grey region where beauty appears in fragments and everything built after looks slightly suspicious. Dense forests. Empty streets. An airport displaying confiscated Gucci crocodile boots. A place that runs on gossip, stagnation mistaken for stability, and the quiet pragmatism of winter-sale dreams. The boredom made him stare at nothing until it became something.

He learned observation in Catholic mass – forced there weekly, scanning the congregation like evidence. The devout, the posers, the lost. Bodies performing faith they may or may not feel. Clothes chosen without logic. Gestures inherited into ritual. The religion never stayed; the surveillance instinct did.

His queerness turned that instinct into survival. Outsider vision as self-defense, curiosity as weapon, and the ability to read the gap between what someone projects and what their body leaks without permission.

And then – goddamn, I'm tired of pretending I don't know exactly what I'm doing :)

I photograph people because I like the moment they stop performing. I like when a face glitches, when a gesture betrays intention, when someone becomes themselves by accident. I grew up watching people pretend in church, in small towns, everywhere – so I can spot it instantly. I wait for it. I hunt for it. I take it.

Photography lets me see what wasn't meant to be seen – not to expose anyone, but to show the version of them that feels real. More honest, which makes it sexier, weirder, and mine.

My work is evidence, tenderness, revenge, and sometimes just spite. West Pomeranian irony meets queer instinct.
A camera as both weapon and caress. I'm just trying to catch people being themselves when they think no one's looking. Turns out, that's when they're hottest.