Uncategorized

Warsaw / Lives / Ruins brings together two tales about Warsaw, or two “archeological digs” of the city. Today, the idea behind Warsaw’s reconstruction after the Second World War—as a promise of social utopia—remains largely invisible. The city’s pre-war roots are but hieroglyphs. Krzysztof Pijarski and Tomasz Szerszeń have embarked on an attempt to decipher this underlying urban grammar, and to listen in on its faint language.
Warsaw / Lives / Ruins marks the first collaboration between the two artists and scholars, who have however been engaged in a creative and intellectual dialogue for years. It is also the result of their shared fascination with Warsaw as a mirage—and an exploration of its latent, potential and imagined aspects.The exhibition features two projects: Warsaw Antiquities and The Lives of Non-Saints.

Katarzyna Mirczak made a strong debut on the photographic scene with her series Special Signs, presented at Paris Photo in 2010 by the London gallerist Eric Franck (Eric Franck Fine Art). Although Special Signs was never exhibited in Poland, the work was noticed by local critics (and discussed in Art&Business and Obieg, amongst others). ether, an exhibition that premiers at Warsaw’s Archeology of Photography Foundation, offers a Polish audience an occasion to explore the work of Katarzyna Mirczak.

With over 140 images by an icon of Polish photography, Zofia Rydet, a cutting-edge graphic design by Wojciech Zamecznik, and meaningful quotes from the writings of Janusz Korczak, Little Man is a unique volume. Published by Arkady in 1965, the art book still makes the most delightful impression with both its photographs and its form, an original approach to the child theme and the charm of rotogravure print.

As part of the documentation of Wojciech Zamecznik’s archive, we have digitalized over 250 portraits of 1960s-era visual artists, among them leading representatives of the Polish School of Posters, e.g. Henryk Tomaszewski, Józef Mroszczak, Roman Cieślewicz, Jan Lenica, Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Młodożeniec, Franciszek Starowieyski, Waldemar Świerzy, Wojciech Fangor, Tadeusz Trepkowski, Julian Pałka, as well artists such as Eryk Lipiński or Alina Szapocznikow.

It is our pleasure to recommend a book recently published by the Foundation: Restauracja / Restaurant by Julia Staniszewska and Mikołaj Łoziński is available in two language versions Polish and English.
Restaurant, by writer Mikołaj Łoziński and photographer Julia Staniszewska, brings together three stories: that of the fall of a restaurant in the suburbs of Warsaw that saw its glory days before 1989; that of the fall of the family that used to run it; and a fragment of Polish history – the transformation from communism to capitalism.

The Foundation has just concluded work on the digitization of Zbigniew Dłubak’s drawings. The works date from different periods, ranging from before the war, through the time of occupation, to post-war years. All of them will be available on our online database soon, in the meantime, we invite you to take a sneak preview in the gallery.
The work was made possible through financial help from the NiNA.

 

1 & 2 is an exhibition built around the issue of applying a mathematical-logical regime in artistic practice. The main pretext for this analysis is the little-recognised work of Janusz Bąkowski (1922-2005), where the theme dominated.  Bąkowski, a self-taught artist who soon became a significant member of the 1970s neo-avantgarde community, was fascinated by the relationship between the ostentatious rigour of mathematics and the freedom of art opposed to it – in his large-format photographic panels and objects, this order is reversed. The clear, realistic representation of photography, sculpture and painting gets decomposed, losing its clarity by means of precise geometric divisions and mathematical calculations.

Mariusz Hermanowicz, The Battlefield / exhibitionAnna Molska, PHOTOGRAPHS (LOOK WHAT I FOUND HERE) / video During this year’s edition of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Archaeology of Photography Foundation offers the first presentation of Mariusz Hermanowicz’s archive, whose research commenced at the beginning of 2015. This premiere presentation will include an individual exhibition of the artist’s works and a video piece by Anna Molska.

The exhibition offers a new reading of Zbigniew Dłubak’s (1921-2005) two celebrated series: his experimental works from the late 1940s, and Asymmetry, presented in a dialogue with drawings and studies for paintings that were not published or exhibited before. Geometries also features a number of hitherto unknown photographs from 1948.

With the countdown to Euro 2012 well underway, the Archeology of Photography Foundation and the National Cultural Centre set out to explore the history of the Warsaw stadium. From March 9, a previously unknown photographic series by Zbigniew Dłubak, documenting the final stage of the construction of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium in 1955, will be on view in Warsaw’s Kordegarda gallery.

One of the characteristic features of contemporary culture is the constant development of a field of phenomena produced as a result of the inertia of artistic media, the blurring of boundaries between them, and their mutual interplay. At the same time, spectators take on the role of artists increasingly easily, entering into a complex network of reactions to stimuli provided by objects of culture. Today we are both witnessing and actively contributing to the acceleration and fragmentation of the system of culture.

This exhibition at the Archeology of Photography Foundation focuses on selected customary ways of depicting “free time” in the 20th-century private photography. Family albums, negatives and slides—loans brought together by the Foundation—reveal a diverse image of this phenomenon.

You is a young female or a young male. Me is a young male or a young female. Things is the world that surrounds them, and of which they dream. Things describe and define them. They make them happy and ensnare them. They let them dream, but also deprive them of their dreams. Things are the third element in the love game between You and Me—a game that takes place in the interiors of modern homes and on the pages of modern magazines…

In the years 1930-1952, Serving as the inspector of the Warsaw University Botanic Garden, Roman Kobendza, Sc.D. systematically photographed groups of plants in successive sections of the Garden. The resulting negatives, each labeled with the name of the species and a date, amassed in several boxes marked with an almost calligraphic writing, represent a contemporary herbarium. The reasons behind Kobendza’s project, however, remain unclear.

We would like to bring to your attention a film by Krzysztof Pijarski, which documents conversations about photography with Jerzy Lewczyński. The film is part of the exhibition Playing the Archive Game currently on show at Galeria Asymetria.

 Since 29 August we’ve moved to a new address at Andersa Street 13, having secured the larger and better-available space through a competition held by the Warsaw Śródmieście district council. Besides office and archive space, the new premises will also house the Foundation’s gallery. We’ll post more info on the gallery’s inauguration and program soon.

A new Living Archives project is soon to be unveiled. This time displayed in Warsaw public space will be Karolina Breguła’s Corrective Photographs – urban wallpapers created using images from the Zofia Chomętowska archive. The project will be on show from 14 September through 3 October. The opening reception, accompanied by an exhibition explaining the project’s background and the opening of the Foundation’s new premises, will take place on 23 September from 17.00 to 22.00 as part of the event Where Is Art?

We are pleased to announce a promotional event for the photo-book Zofia Chomętowska. Polesie. Photographs from 1925-1939, which will take place at Klub/Księgarnia Wrzenie Świata, Gałczyńskiego Street 7, on Wednesday, 12 October, at 19.00. Participants will include Karolina Breguła (artist, photographer, author of the Corrective Photographs project), Adam Mazur (photography critic and historian), Karolina Puchała-Rojek (photography historian, the book’s editor). The meeting is organised by the Archaeology of Photography Foundation and Instytut Reportażu.

The Archive as a Project. The Politics and Poetics of the (Photo) Archive – the post-conference publication, published as part of the FotoRejestr project,  edited by Krzysztof Pijarski, is now available from the Foundation (Andersa Street 13, Entrance  VII, Warsaw).  
The publication is free. More details about the book >>> FotoRejestr
Project co-financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism and by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

This year, the Foundation has completed the digitization of Zbigniew Dłubak’s positives that comprise his oeuvre, including both prints and contact sheets. The complete scanned material will be soon available in our online database. Among the prints are works and contact sheets from the series “Gesticulations” and “Desymbolizations”, as well as shots used in “Iconosphere” from 1967. A small selection of images is available in the gallery.