‘Theatre Memory: Polish Theatre Photography From Its Beginnings to the Present Day’ – Virtual Exhibition of the Theatre Institute | Article

‘Theatre Memory: Polish Theatre Photography From Its Beginnings to the Present Day’ – Virtual Exhibition of the Theatre Institute

pamiecteatru-pl-screenshot1.jpg, default, ‘Pamięć Teatru – polska fotografia teatralna’, photo: pamiecteatru.pl / screenshot

#performing arts

The Theatre Memory virtual exhibition is unique primarily for two reasons: it is the first attempt at a comprehensive view of the history of Polish theatre photography, while being an exhibition that can be viewed without leaving one’s home. Theatre Memory is therefore part of the digital humanities movement using online publications as a method of popularising knowledge in an accessible and inclusive manner.

The exhibition has been divided chronologically into three chapters: the first covering the period from the birth of photography as a medium, i.e. from 1839, to the moment Poland regained its independence; the second, whose turning point is 1989; and the third, continuing to the present day. The extensive material was selected according to three curatorial ideas created consecutively by Dr Agnieszka Wanicka, a theatre scholar specializing in the study of acting and theatre iconography; photographer and essayist Wojciech Nowicki in cooperation with Bartosz Flak, an anthropologist and assistant professor at the Museum of Photography in Kraków; as well as photographer and visual artist Magdalena Hueckel in cooperation with theatre scholar Magdalena Ożarowska. The curators selected a total of four hundred exhibits, with the three ideas resulting in a heterogeneous perspective from which the relationship between theatre and photography is viewed. The three chapters are also accompanied by essays. Both the theatre photography and the three curatorial entities make the multiplication of perspectives possible.

A figure curled up on a couch

‘Pamięć Teatru – polska fotografia teatralna’, photo: pamiecteatru.pl / screenshot

The Rytm.Digital team is responsible for the design of the website. The layout is simple, so it does not compete visually with the photographs. The home page of the clear, black-and-white project is ‘infected’ with a cascade of selected photos from the exhibition, following the cursor as we move it. This is both a visually and a functionally attractive solution, as well as a harbinger of what we can see when we delve deeper: several dozen photographs flowing before the eyes of the site’s visitors consist both of photos from a 19th-century atelier (including the sensual Helena Modrzejewska, for whom it was obviously a kind of PR career development move), as well as of a bird’s-eye view of Parade Square with the visible inscription ДЕТИ (CHILDREN) as a way of showing solidarity with brutally bombed Ukraine; we also see frames from performances taking place in virtual reality, a photo of Monika Strzępka floating above the stage of Dramatyczny Theatre in a gold gown and mementos from backstage (on a couch which I identify as the wings of the Nowy Theatre in Warsaw, we see a figure curled up and hidden under a pile of clothes).

From this introduction alone – a ribbon of photos moving in accordance with the trajectory given by the exhibition’s viewers – one can tell how the curatorial team frames theatre photography. Within the framework of Pamięć Teatru (Theatre Memory), it seems to be defined as an accompanying medium, preserving its specificity, while at the same time broadening the semantic and aesthetic field of the performance. The performance, in relation to the photography, thus becomes a kind of junction focusing not only on the stage presentation itself but also on aspects related to the preparations, the team (artistic, technical, administrative), the backstage, the architecture, the audience and the inevitable entanglement of the theatre with the socio-political order.

Photo for the family

Helena Modrzejewska in the role of Cleopatra, 1880, photo: Jan Mieczkowski / Polona.pl

Although the subtitle and the specific timeframe indicate that there is a clear beginning in the history of theatre photography (here it would be the year 1839, considered to be the birth of the medium itself), Agnieszka Wanicka emphasizes in her curatorial essay that ‘it is not in dates that the essence of a beginning lies’. In this way, she draws attention to the fluidity and temporal instability present in every attempt to determine the date of the beginning of some history. The curatorial choice regarding the earliest period of Polish theatre photography dates back to several years preceding the date of 1839 – Wanicka decided to include lithographs in the collection, i.e. earlier attempts to capture a moving theatre event in a static form. The selection presents this earliest stage, which ended when Poland regained its independence, as highly diverse – limited not only to sessions in costumes taken in the studio or staged shots of scenes from a performance (with which we usually associate old theatre photographs). Photography was also a commodity – the virtual exhibition will feature postcards, mirrors and fans with images of actors and actresses. This shortening of the distance between the audience and the stars of the stage was also achieved through photographic reports, such as the one from behind the scenes of the Rozmaitości (Variety) Theatre published in the weekly Świat (World) in 1906.

On the other hand, photographs from the general strike in front of the Municipal (Miejski) Theatre in Lviv in 1905 or those showing street vendors in front of the Grand (Wielki) Theatre demonstrate the inseparable relationship between the theatre as an institution operating in a building and the dynamics of the urban fabric with all its ruptures and routines. There is also a moving – as if from a different order – tightly framed shot of Irena Solska with her daughter Anna. The famous actress is looking down and seems slightly pensive and absent, while her daughter, then four or five years old, is pressing her cheek to her mother’s temple as she looks boldly straight into the camera. In the diverse curatorial selection dealing with the first chapter of the exhibition, we will see photographs typical of the actor-mania of the time taken by masters of the craft Jan Mieczkowski and Walery Rzewuski, which will be balanced by other aspects of this craft. The close connections between photography and the economy, marketing, politics and social relations were perfectly visible at that time. Wanicka emphasizes this when writing about the important role of photography in the context of the partition period and the January Uprising:

In 1863 and 1864, there was a spike in the activity of the increasingly popular photography studios – every combatant wanted to leave their loved ones a portrait as a memento. Photographs of the fallen became relics for families, reminding them of their love for their homeland and building a national identity across the partitions.

Inside the theatre…

The second chapter of the exhibition covers the time from the interwar period to the turning point of 1989. Wojciech Nowicki’s selection is relatively uniform in nature, which probably results from the curator’s belief in the role of theatre photography as a tool that is primarily intended to preserve the memory of a performance. In his text, Nowicki – as if completely apart from the not so recently developing reflection on the (im)permanence of the performing arts – describes theatre as an ephemeral phenomenon, of which ‘relatively little remains’. In his opinion, video recording is the most apt form of preserving a performance, in contrast to human memory, which the author sees as defective, temporary and fragmentary, and the memory’s attempt to ‘preserve the entire performance’ as doomed to failure from the outset. Hence, in the central part of the exhibition, we will see primarily shots from performances by ‘the great creators’: [Tadeusz] Kantor, [Miron] Białoszewski, [Lidia] Zamkow, Jarema [Stępowski], [Andrzej] Wajda, [Jerzy] Grotowski, [Krystyna] Skuszanka, [Józef] Szajna and [Jerzy] Jarocki. Nowicki devoted a lot of space to the characteristic medium-format frames of Wojciech Plewiński or the creative shots of Edward Hartwig, who also liked to photograph the work of craftsmen and the technical team, as well as theatrical seams, such as the assembly of the stage set.

The selection of photographs from this period is, however, somewhat disappointing because the theatre of the interwar period was recorded on photographic films in a much broader and more interesting way than the exhibition suggests (after all, it was a period when innovative staging developed, resulting in visual settings that were pleasing to the lens), and the decision to remain within the theatre reality somewhat impoverishes the view of this art as being separate from what is political and social (for example, photographs of the protests surrounding the removal of Kazimierz Dejmek’s Dziady [Forefathers’ Eve] from playbills, an important part of the events of 1968, just beg to be included in the exhibition).

…and more than theatre

Thumbnail — Scene from ‘Kino moralnego niepokoju’, directed by Michał Borczuch, 2019, photo: Maurycy Stankiewicz / Nowy Teatr in Warsaw

The last chapter of the exhibition presents theatre photography as having an emancipated function that is far from purely documentary and servile. It seems that the creators of this field have not only accepted but also begun to affirm the instability of the memory of a performance, often directing their attention to fragments and material curiosities or turning the camera’s eye towards what we usually do not look at. ‘In the 21st century, the memory of the theatre is being democratized’, says the subtitle of the selection made by Magdalena Hueckel, who in her text emphasizes, among other things, the phenomenon of the visual transfer from the professional sphere to the universally accessible one of social media, co-created by everyone regardless of professional status. Theatre photography in democratic Poland has been presented by Hueckel as strongly authorial, extending to diverse aesthetics. Here we will find both the minimalist, sometimes disturbing shots of space and objects taken by Karolina Jóźwiak, Tomasz Tyndyk, Nicolas Grospierre and Bartek Warzecha, as well as Natalia Kabanow’s intense, vivid frames, Stefan Okołowicz’s expressive shots from the early 2000s and Marek Gardulski’s subdued, muted photos created in the 1990s. Unorthodox photographs of actresses and actors (including by Tyndyk, Warzecha and Wojciech Sobolewski), suggestive of the tradition of 19th-century posed shots, also carry a trace of the author’s attempt to break the aesthetic codes of theatre documentation.

Hueckel also drew attention to moments in which theatre becomes a medium of protest and a space of resistance, as well as an expression of political postulates: this is evidenced by, among others, Tobiasz Papuczys’s photograph from the protest of the Polish Theatre in Wrocław against Cezary Morawski’s appointment as the theatre’s new director, Magdalena Hueckel’s shot of actors with their mouths taped shut as they walk out to applause after Krystian Lupa’s Proces (The Trial), Przemek Wierzchowski’s reportage shot from the protest in front of the Zygmunt Hübner Powszechny Theatre against the play Klątwa (The Curse), or a photograph from the Słowacki Theatre showing the theatre group’s resistance to the dismissal of Krzysztof Głuchowski from the position of director. To paraphrase what Hueckel wrote, these are photographs that ‘blur the boundaries of theatre’:

The pictures represent the moment when theatre becomes more than a performance, more than the recitation of a dramatic text from the stage, more than acting and performing. The emotions and actions extend beyond the walls of the theatre buildings and become social and political events, drawing the audience into their turbulent core. Theatre becomes the cause for debate, a field of struggle for artistic independence and individual freedom. Perhaps no other medium provokes the same emotions in Poland as theatre.

Theatre Memory was conceived as a narrative about the evolution of theatre photography on an aesthetic, technological and social level. The title of the exhibition may therefore refer to the potential of photography as a tool supporting human memory of performances, as well as to the memory of theatre itself: a function inherent in the nature of the medium, which has its own internal dynamics of remembering and forgetting, creating and obscuring memories because it is a living, active and relational nexus of material, affective, institutional, aesthetic, human and non-human qualities.

LINK TO THE EXHIBITION

Translated from Polish by Michał Abel Pelczar

Language English

theatre institute

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polish theatre