The year 1900. Fifteen-year-old Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz creates a non-obvious photograph: an almost completely abstract scene enveloped in gloom. Enchanted by the image’s uncanniness, Stanisław Witkiewicz Sr. sends a letter to his son praising its mastery.“It looks like the beginning of a fairy tale: Over the hills and far away lived a shepherd... And indeed, in comparison with our urban existence, life in that green, sunny meadow, a life so primal and simple, seems like a page taken from some fabulous tale about a Golden Age of human happiness.”The great majority of displayed items was executed within three years (1910-1913), these were intimate pictures of the artist’s friends, family, and lovers. Supposedly the need to create photographic portrait series constituted – as it did in the case of the artist’s self-portraits – a visual exemplification of Witkiewicz’s interest in splitting up the human personality. In his photography, he resolves not to keep a safe distance: he comes up extremely close to his models, intruding into their ‘comfort zone’.The artist was the first one in Western Art History to take human faces’ close-ups. Witkacy’s photographs defy convention and constitute an innovative approach to the issue of framing. In this respect, his works can be compared with photographs taken several decades later by the outstanding British photographer Bill Brandt (1904-1983)38, or even the contemporary works of Nicholas Nixon (born 1947).