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We would like to invite you to Śródmieście works!, a picnic organized by non-governmental organizations, which will take place this Saturday, 17th May, at Plac Konstytucji. Between 12-4pm, books published by the Foundation will be available for sale, while at 1pm a cyanotype workshop will take place. 

 

The Archaeology of Photography Foundation invites you to a consultation point organized as part of the New Home project, organized by the Community Cultural Centre ’Węglin’ in Lublin. The Foundation also organizes a meeting about the protection of private archives,  accompanied by opening of Ewa Hulley’s exhibition The Archive at Kiosk ze Sztuką. More information about the project. 

 

 We welcome everyone who would like to find out about how to protect their own collections of photography. Each home archive hides exceptional photographs which are waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some of them are exceptionally valuable historically or artistically? Perhaps some of our ancestors were artists, or maybe the photographs which we accidentally found in an flea markets have a chance of getting to art galleries worldwide?

Consultations, accompanying Vivian Maier’s exhibition, will take place on 22nd May, between 3-7pm at Leica Gallery in Mysia 3. 

One of our permanent and most important activities is cataloguing, digitizing, and describing archives which we look after. This year, we plan to scan 8200 photographs from the archives of Wojciech Zamecznik, Zofia Chomętowska, and Tadeusz Sumiński. The vast majority of them will be meticulously described and uploaded to our online library, while a select part of the photographs will also be made available in the galleries on our website. We invite everyone to make use of our galleries and online library, released under the Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Free copies of the Thinking Books post-workshop publication are available for pick-up at the Foundation’s office. The workshop accompanied the programme of the exhibitions Ambiguous Warsaw: Tadeusz Sumiński, Wojciech Zamecznik, Maria Chrząszczowa. We also welcome you to have a look at the documentation of the workshop.The Thinking Books project – workshop based on the photographs of Warsaw architecture of the 1960s and ‘70s was co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw. 

Karolina Ziębińska Lewandowska, Between the document and the experiment. Photography in Polish photographic periodicals 1945-1989
Anyone who was engaged or interested in photography in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland is aware of the importance of magazines, next to exhibitions. Titles such as Fotografia or Obscura were analogical to Literatura na Świecie in the field of literature or Teksty in philosophy and linguistics in that they updated their readers with the most exciting currents in Poland and abroad in their respective subject matters. 
The richly illustrated book by Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska presents the most interesting examples from the areas of critique and post-war photography. The author discusses the avant-garde wave after the end of WW2, conflicts over the status of socialist realism, analytical photography (‘photomedialism’), the question of abstraction in photography, the impressive growth of photoreportage, and how all of these phenomena were described. This publication fills the gap in the coverage of the Polish photography in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland. 

The Archaeology of Photography Foundation presents the first Polish translation of the book by Clément Chéroux, one of the most interesting contemporary curators and critics of photography. The book, comprising seven essays, tells the story of one of the least investigated and, at the same time, one of the richest areas of photography – applied and non-artistic photography.

Multiple portrait, associated in Poland mostly with the archives of Marcel Duchamp and Witkacy, was one of the most popular photographic games in the early 20th century. Private collections and home archives still hide photographs with multiplied reflections of models. The Russians called it the “American trick,” while the Americans referred to it as multiphotography. It arrived to Poland thanks to Witkacy, who brought the idea from St. Petersburg.

Intense work is pending on the archive of Wojciech Zamecznik. Please visit the gallery where we’ve uploaded his designs for 1966 and 1967 calendars created for Gdańsk Shipyard. Gallery >>>

Work on Wojciech Zamecznik’s archive has been financially supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

 

As part of the Retelling the City project, the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw is presenting two exhibitions prepared by the APF: The Chroniclers. Photographs of Warsaw 1945-1947 and Stadium 55. The former shows little known works of Zofia Chomętowska and Maria Chrząszczowa who, having returned to Warsaw in 1945, documented the city’s ruins and gradual reconstruction.

Join the Photosprint and Celebrate the Foundation’s 5th Birthday with Us! When: Friday, 29 November, starts at 8 p.m

The 3rd edition of the Archaeology of Photography Foundation’s crazy photography auction, the Photosprint, is coming up. On the walls of the Skwer – branch of the Fabryka Trzciny Art Centre at Skwer Hoovera (Krakowskie Przedmieście Street 60a) will be posted photographs by established and debuting artists, both contemporary and reprints of historical ones. Train your reflexes or simply allow yourself to be seduced by the appeal of best-quality photography! All items with the same starting price, marked just by a number, without author’s name. In the birthday menu also: a portrait station, a lottery, and a dance party!

In 1936, Zofia Chomętowska won a competition for the position of a staff photographer of the Ministry of Transport’s Department of Tourism. Her job was to document tourist attractions throughout the territory of the Second Polish Republic. Displayed in public places, e.g. at train stations and inside train cars, the photographs were meant to encourage citizen mobility, stimulate tourism and promote a positive image of the country; their role was thus primarily propagandistic.

Big changes at the Foundation in the new year! Beginning with mid-February, the Foundation will be led by Karolina Puchała-Rojek, who is the co-founder of the Foundation and, up until recently, its vice-president. Marta Szymańska, the programme director of the Łódź Photo Festival, is joining our board. Karolina Lewandowska, who has presided over the Foundation for the past five years, is leaving us in order to gather priceless experience abroad, but will nevertheless support the Foundation with her ideas and good advice.

We warmly invite you to the opening of the exhibition of photographs by Antoni Zdrodowski, a photographer from Białystok. The private view will take place on the 3rd of April (Thursday) at 6.30 pm at the Archaeology of Photography Foundation’s gallery. The exhibition has been curated by Grzegorz Dąbrowski. Feel welcome to take this opportunity to also visit our neighbours – Starter Gallery and Stacja Muranów.

On 14-15 October 2013, the National Museum in Warsaw is going to host the international seminar Photography – Museum Narratives. The seminar is organized by the Archaeology of Photography Foundation, in collaboration with the National Museum in Warsaw and the National Institute of Museology and Collections Protection. The aim of the conference is to investigate the position of photography within contemporary museum institutions and to determine the function and premises of photography museums. This event will bring forth an opportunity to become acquainted with histories of photographic collections and acquiring strategies of institutions such as:  Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Getty Museum (LA), Art Institute of Chicago,  Musée Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône) , Musée de l'Élysée (Lausanne), and Rosphoto (St. Petersburg).   Program>>

 

The Archaeology of Photography Foundation has produced a film based on tapes from the archive of outstanding graphic artist and designer, Wojciech Zamecznik, edited by director and cinematographer Adam Palenta.
Discovered years later, amateur films from the People’s Poland era (1945-1989) captivate the viewer with their form and unique sense of humour. Seldom, however, do they show life outside the public sphere; under real socialism, especially in the early period, the film camera was hardly available for private users. From this point of view, the films from the years 1949-1966 discovered in the archive of graphic artist Wojciech Zamecznik constitute highly valuable material, in both aesthetic and documentary terms. 

Our readers are encouraged to see the exhibition Fotorejestr. Wolska  / Ebert as part of the I Artist. Archives and Amateurs section of the annual Fotosfestiwal in Łódź. Exhibition opens on 6 June at 7. p.m.  and is on view through 16 June.

One of the most influential representatives of the Polish postwar photographic avant-garde, Zbigniew Dłubak started working on the theme of the female nude around 1958 and continued it for the rest of his practice. However, he was never considered an expert in nude photography, a paradox that can be explained by the fact that his nudes always followed modernist logic, serving to make statements on the language of photography, on the processes of sign creation and interpretation, or on the mechanisms of visual perception. Emphasized, such theoretical investigations were far more important than the fact that they were carried out on photographs of the naked female body. Gallery>>>  Photographs >>>

A seminar devoted to Polish photography, organised by Sabina Jaskot-Gill (University of Essex / Tate) and Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska (APF), will take place at Tate Modern on 6 June 2013. Seminar programme  >>>

 

We’ve posted a gallery of photos from the exhibition Zbigniew Dłubak. Body Structures, part of Photoespaña 2013. Exhibition curator: Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska, exhibition design: Jan Strumiłło.
Photographic documentation: Jakub Certowicz / Skanery niewiarygodne
Gallery>>>