Marzena Pogorzały

Staff Profile

I was born in Poland and grew up (and up…) in the middle of the great European forest, having to compete with six million trees for light.

After four years at Gdansk University (Marine Biology and Oceanography), my attempt to write a thesis on plankton was frustrated by their failure to keep still and by my own desire to escape the prospect of a lifetime under Communism.

I relocated to Britain at the height of martial law (1983) and kept my head above water by waiting tables and proof-reading for Polish samizdat publications in London.  Later, I embarked on a course in photography, and took it up semi-professionally, and publications in magazines, book jackets and exhibitions have been the result.  My photographic subjects have included Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Alfred Brendel, and, more recently, Simon Schama.

In the last decade I have spent much of my time travelling in the Arctic and Antarctica photographing glaciers and icebergs.  Ice became something of an obsession.

I live in a tiny flat crammed with books, pictures of icebergs and writers, and a chaos of strange and unfathomable objects.  One of these, my friends try to convince me, is an oven. [I can’t be the only one longing for Marzena’s cookery recommendations… Ed.]

In my spare time, I dance tango or read novels.

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