Strona główna - Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii

The cover of the Shoes and Accessories catalogue published in 1954 by the Warsaw Institute of Industrial Design (IWP) features open-toe sandals and a wicker-and-canvas handbag. Just as modern design and local traditions are merged today, so, it turns out, they were under real socialism. The comprehensive catalogue text discussing the summer collection prototypes suggests that the designers sought not only functionality of form but also economically viable and hygienic solutions. Behind the text’s ideologized language stands a product-design philosophy that sounds surprisingly modern and fresh today.

A preview of new publications has been posted, among them Wojciech Zamecznik Now; Zbigniew Dłubak, Body Structure; Katarzyna Mirczak, ether; Jerzy Lewczyński, Informément, Zofia Chomętowska, Archivo privado and a re-edition of Zofia Rydet’s Little Man.

 

The Foundation has completed the digitization of Zofia Chomętowska’s private archive, a collection that includes, but is not limited to, images from her life in Argentina after 1947. The digitized archive will be soon available online and a selection of photographs published in a separate volume. View a sample gallery.
The digitization of Zofia Chomętowska’s archive has been made possible by financial support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

 

The Foundation has completed the digitization of Wojciech Zamecznik’s collection of over 300 posters, photographic studies and mock-ups. A selection of images has been posted in gallery, the complete collection will be made available online soon.
The digitization of Wojciech Zamecznik’s archive has been financially supported under the Digital Heritage program.

 

(I’m) Moviemaking is a unique, never previously shown film by Zofia Chomętowska, offering glimpses from the private life of her aristocratic family and friends in the late 1920s. The film is a one-of-a-kind 27-minute-long montage of archival footage, conceived by Karolina Puchała-Rojek, with literary commentary by Mikołaj Łoziński and music by the Warsaw Village Band. The material remained in obscurity until only recently, as did the very fact that Chomętowska had ever made films, even though this major pre-1950 Polish woman photographer actually debuted, at the Poznań National Exhibition in 1929, with a film rather than a photography project.
 

The APF is completing the digitisation of documents from Zbigniew Dłubak’s archive, including the artist’s correspondence and personal notes. A list of the whole collection will be available online soon. Right: photo by Jakub Certowicz.

 

Work on Maria Chrząszczowa’s archive has been under way. Best known for her documentations of the ruins of 1945 Warsaw, Chrząszczowa’s photographs have been shown in an APF exhibition and featured in the publication The Chroniclers. As part of recent work, some of the author’s earliest negatives have been straightened, secured and scanned. Besides the ruin documentations, the collection includes photos from the 1950s and 1960s, showing Warsaw’s architecture, including newly built developments. The whole collection will be available online soon.

We have completed the digitisation of 3 hours of Wojciech Zamecznik’s 16 mm films from 1949-1967. The footage documents family life, artistic meetings and trips, as well as Zamecznik’s exhibitions.

 

A new publication, Teoria sztuki Zbigniewa Dłubaka [Zbigniew Dłubak’s Art Theory], ed. Magdalena Ziółkowska, is available (since 2 March) at the Foundation. Graphic design by Joanna Jopkiewicz. Gallery >>>

 

The APF is launching a new exhibition series, Phototheque: starting this year, besides authors represented by the Foundation, we will start showing interesting but little known archives from outside Warsaw. The purpose is to contribute to the charting of a decentralised map of photographic individualities. The series begins with Energy of Time. The Dalkia Archive, a collection of photographs from ca. 1922-1940 by Łódź-based documentalist Wiktor Jekimenko, which premiered at the ‘Fotofestiwal’ International Photographic Festival in Łódź in 2011. The exhibition opens on 12 March 2013 (Tuesday) at 7 p.m. Curators: Marta Szymańska (Fotofestiwal Łódź), Marek Domański.

The photographs, small notes, studies, and working prints of Wojciech Zamecznik (1923-1967) share an oneiric feel and a surrealistic visual quality. Virtually each originates in a differ ‘order’, each served a different purpose, comprised a different narrative, and yet are all formally close. The photographs and film excerpts presented in the exhibition at the Archaeology of Photography Foundation lift the veil of reality.

Two different approaches to the human body, two extreme perspectives, a polarized experience of the body and two completely different contexts come together in the photographs by Szymon Rogiński i Zbigniew Dłubak.
The series Wir In Dresden by Rogiński and Systems – Gesticulations by Dłubak differ in just about everything except the fascination with the naked body and its photographic representation.

The exhibition Between the Frames. Photographs of Zofia Chomętowska from Polesie 1925-1939 marks the first comprehensive presentation of photographs by Zofia Chomętowska (1902-1991) in Poland in over 30 years. The artist, an exceptional and somewhat forgotten figure of Polish culture, was among the best-known and most awarded photographers of the 1930s.

Wojciech Zamecznik (1923-1967), was an outstanding graphic artists, and one of the founders of the “Polish school of posters”. In his practice Zamecznik consistently employed photographs he had personally taken—transforming them in the course of experiments with different light-sensitive techniques, creating abstract records of light as motifs for further posters and covers, and including documentary photographs, taken during everyday activities as well as on journeys, characterized by an exceptional sensitivity to form.

From 20th to 24th of October 2012, the Center of Photography in Minsk hosted a workshop Animation Through Photography co-organized by the Archeology of Photography Foundation. Organizers: Archeology of Photography Foundation, Center of Photography, Nova Gallery of Visual Arts, partner: Polish Institute in Minsk.

On Friday, 19th October, Nova Gallery at the Center of Photography in Minsk will host the opening of the exhibition Land-Scapes. Re-Activation which brings together different views onto the local realities in Belarus and in Poland. The exhibition features selected fragments from larger projects by six photographers whose work refers to the place they live in, its history, lacks and topical issues. With: Karolina Bregula, Andrey Kolesnikov, Uladzimir Parfianok, Krzysztof Pijarski, Konrad Pustola, students of the Center of Photography.
 

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.