COMMUNISM UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Polish Photography After 1945
www.asymetria.eu
PARIS PHOTO 2012
Grand Palais, 15-18 novembre
COMMUNISM UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Polish Photography After 1945
Asymetria Gallery, Warsaw
Book signing
Jean François Chevrier signs the book on Jerzy Lewczynski “Informément”
Friday 16th November, 5 pm
The exhibition Communism Under Construction – Polish Photography after 1945, explores
the interplay between two concepts: on the one hand, a political vision of building an ideal
society following a plan imposed by top-tier bureaucracy, on the other, principles of artistic
representation, employed at that time (either as accepted or imposed). The notion of
construction also holds a double meaning: it refers to both a planned and realized political
effort, as well as the most significant manifestation of the Polish avant-garde –
Constructivism.
The exhibition features photographs depicting daily life in the “ideal city” of Nowa Huta, near
Kraków, as well as its construction, personally commissioned by Stalin. These photographs
by Wiktor Pental and Henryk Makarewicz are characterized by a strong sense of humanism
and humor. Another humanist approach is offered by Zofia Rydet and her series Little Man
realized in numerous communist countries. Another section presents highly formal industrial
compositions by Tadeusz Sumiński. The exhibition also includes eclectic and ironic works
(both constructivist and surrealist) by the eminent classic Jerzy Lewczynski, whose detached
observations of his surrounding reality anticipate his later investigations into conceptualism
and found photography. Most of the photographs presented were taken in the period from the
1950s to the early 1970s.
In addition, as a form of a contemporary commentary and counterpart, we will show several
works by two artists born in the 1980s – Krzysztof Pijarski and Tomasz Szerszeń, both
referring in their projects to the history and heritage of communism in visual culture. The
former traces the fate of “toppled effigies” to the heroes of the past, the latter, using cut-out
fragments from the first Polish lifestyle magazine from the 1960s, presents a different face of
communist reality through photo collages.
The exhibition is prepared through cooperation between Asymetria Gallery, Imago Mundi
Foundation, and the Archeology of Photography Foundation.
Curated by:
Rafał Lewandowski
Karolina Lewandowska
Łukasz Trzciński
Nowa Huta – The Ideal City
Henryk Makarewicz and Wiktor Pental
Nowa Huta, a symbol of modernity and progress, a conception of the urban ideal, was a heady
undertaking during the first years after 1945 installing a new regime in Poland. The
construction of the “first socialist city” in Poland began in the summer of 1949. The town of
workers, which was to attract Poles from all around the country, was to remain in stark
contrast to the “reactionary” intelligentsia of Kraków. Nowa Huta was planned as a modern,
self-sufficient entity, its foundations firmly rooted in a metallurgical plant, the Lenin
Steelworks. Even though the photographs of Henryk Makarewicz and Wiktor Pental were
taken in this one place, Nowa Huta, they capture the atmosphere of the whole country during
the 1950s and 60s. The photographs speak of the ordinary lives with which the authorities of
the Peoples’ Republic of Poland were not always interested. Both photographers took
photographs for themselves, and were not working on commission.
The Imago Mundi Foundation - Kraków
Wiktor Pental (b. 1920)
As photographer and construction worker from Nowa Huta, Pental inspected almost every
corner of the new city as part of his duties. Following the humanist tradition, he focused on
people. Much like Robert Doisneau, to whose photographs Pental’s works could be
compared, the images concentrate on a single motif. All of his practice concerned Nowa Huta
and the people that made up the fabric of the town. Pental’s approach to people is
characterized by lightness and humor, never distance.
Henryk Makarewicz (1917-1984)
As a photographer and cameraman for the Polish Film Chronicle, Makarewicz was
inseparable from his camera. He documented Nowa Huta from the very beginning of its
existence. His recognizable, elegant style could be compared to that of Henri Cartier-Bresson:
always there, at the heart of events, waiting for the ideal moment when all the elements come
together to form a flawless whole. In the case of Makarewicz, formal perfection and the
search for the ultimate shot is everything.
Jerzy Lewczyński (b. 1924)
Is a photographer, historian and photography activist by passion, and an engineer by
profession. Lewczyński developed a unique and individual approach to photography,
characterized by a heightened sensitivity to his surroundings, but also to the photographs left
to us by history. He has been involved in photography since the 1950s, playing an important
role in the structure of the photographic movement in Silesia. He took part in Subjective
Photography (Kraków, 1968) and Photographers Explorers (Warsaw, 1971), exhibitions
which embodied modernist values in Polish photography. With the end of the 1960s, issues of
history and memory came to the fore in Lewczynski’s work. He began collecting old
damaged negatives which he then developed, reviving and often discovering the memories of
other people, events, and places. This endeavor led him to formulate the theoretical concept of
the “Archeology of Photography.” Through research on forgotten photography, Lewczyński
attempts to offer commentary on the present-day.
Tadeusz Sumiński (1924-2009)
An economist by education, but unable to find employment in the 1950s because of his
engagement in the Warsaw Uprising, Sumiński began to earn money with photography. At
the outset of his career he worked, amongst other things, as a laboratory technician at the
Central Photographic Agency, a photographer at the Institute of Industrial Design, and in the
early 1960s, as a full-time reporter for the Africa & Asia section of “Poland” monthly.
Sumiński is best known for his landscape works characterized by a classic formula strongly
informed by the pictorial practice of Jan Bułhak. However in his industrial photographs he
manifests his fascination for constructivism’s legacy, looking for repetitive forms, geometry,
strong contrast and altered perspectives. His photographs from factories, dating from the
1960s, are an autonomous approach to the highly politicized subject of the developments of
the communist economy.
Zofia Rydet (1911 - 1997)
The intimate and multilayered practice of Zofia Rydet is today part of both the Polish and the
international canon of the history of photography. Her subsequent series of works and
exhibitions testify to her independent and modern approach.
Little Man, which focused on images of children and falls within the tradition inspired by
Steichen’s Family of Man, was Rydet’s first major series to be featured in an individual
exhibition (Gliwice, 1961), and was then developed into a book (1965), which merits a place
in the world canon of photographic albums. The series proved extremely successful and came
to be considered one of the most distinctive undertakings in Polish photography. In the late
1960s, the artist began exploring photomontage, a technique she apparently enjoyed and used
for the rest of her life. Such was the origin of her project World of Feelings and Imagination,
published as an album in 1979. Parallel to working with collage and photomontage, Rydet
continued to practice traditional photography, developing her most significant series The
Sociological Record. This extensive project, which came to include thousands of negatives,
dates back to 1978 when the artist embarked on the practice of photographing people in the
interiors of their old village houses. Consistency, regularity, and an exceptionally sensitive
approach, have earned this project a place in the avant-garde of world photography.
Tomasz Szerszeń (b. 1981)
Is a photographer, anthropologist and historian, as well as the author of several photographic
projects which address history. The work You. Me. Things is built on and around a cult
magazine – Ty i Ja (You and Me), published in Poland between 1960 and 1971, promoting a
modern, Western way of life. In the deepest days of the People’s Republic of Poland, this
magazine reprinted photographs by Avedon, Newton, Sieff or Bourdin, presented fashion and
interior design novelties straight from Paris and New York, and offered a glimpse of a modern
world inhabited by beautiful people and beautiful things. The world featured in Ty i Ja was
out of reach for most readers – it was a utopia, a vision of a better, more beautiful and modern
reality. A series of 12 photocollages is made out of Ty i Ja magazine pages and shows another
aspect of the idea of communism under construction.
Krzysztof Pijarski (b. 1980)
Is a photographer and art historian whose artistic practice focuses on issues of historical
construction, memory, and the archive. The project Life and Death of Monuments shows the history
of the destruction of communist monuments and sculptures in Warsaw at the time of the
transformation. It concerns the changes in the memory of the city. Pijarski doesn’t follow the
esthetics of ruins but rather the economies of representations and narrations, looking to
visually deconstruct the communist iconography. The artist investigates not only the places
where these iconographically powerful monuments were situated, but also their current
location, their “afterlife”. The project has two forms – a book and plates composed of several
prints. Taking archives as its point of reference, it addresses the present condition of the
monuments, as well as their presence in history books.
The presentation Communism in Construction at Paris Photo was co-financed by:
Warsaw Municipal Office for Culture
Ars Cameralis
Marshal’s Office of the Silesia Voivodship
Marshal’s Office of the Małopolskie Voivodship
Partner:
Polish Institute in Paris
Organizers:
Asymetria Gallery,
Jakubowska 16, Warsaw
www.asymetria.eu
tel. +48 797 194 027
Imago Mundi Foundation,
ul. św. Teresy 7/13
31-162 Cracow
www.imagomundi.pl
Archeology of Photography Foundation
Andersa 13, Warsaw
www.photoarchives.pl