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Podsumowanie
Marking the centennial anniversary of photographer Zofia Rydet's birthday and the 50th anniversary of her first solo show, Julia Staniszewska has set her own images of expectant parents against Rydet's iconic portraits of children from Poland and abroad. The collective show creates a novel context for both generations of artists and their subjects...
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Page from Zofia Rydet's "Little Man", 1965, courtesy of Galeria Asymetria
A joint exhibition of photographs take two diverse collections and set them together to create a new collective context of expectation and parenthood
2011 is the centennial anniversary of Zofia Rydet's birth and the 50th anniversary of her first solo show. That 1961 show included photographs of children taken over a series of years in Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Italy. The exhibition's point of departure is Zofia Rydet's Mały człowiek" / "Little Man, an album of over 140 photographs of children, edited by Wojciech Zamecznik and published in 1965. The book is considered one of the most important albums of Polish 20th century photography.
Rydet recalls in an interview with Wiesława Wierzchowska:
When working on the 'Little Man' exhibition and album. I wanted to move away from the stereotype of a care-free angelic childhood and show the multifaceted complexity of childhood experiences and reactions. Through appropriate synthesis, I wanted to say something about mankind, because as Korczak once said "everything that happens in the dirty adult world also happens in the children's world".
Asymetria curator curator by Julia Staniszewska has chosen 40 images from the album and set them against Oczekiwanie" / "Expecting a series of her own photographs, taken in a fertility clinic. The latter series injects a new and contemporary context to Rydet's works. The theme of motherhood and expectation returns numerous times in Rydet's later work, especially in her photo collages. The choice to place Rydet's work alongside those of Staniszewska, a photographer of the younger generation whose focus is, rather, adults who desire a child.
The "Little Man / Expecting" exhibition inaugurates an extended project of the Photography Archaeology Foundation, titled "Living Archives," which aims to inject historical photography into the broader context of art and culture by a reinterpreting it through works of contemporary artists.
Curator: Julia Staniszewska
The show runs between March 10 - April 22, 2011.
Galeria Asymetria
ul. Nowogrodzka 18a lok. 8
00-544 Warszawa
Tel. (+ 48 22) 628 14 64
link*www.asymetria.eu*http://www.asymetria.eu/en/html/?str=podstrona_wystawy&t=1&id=106a368_afe****Source: press materials