Photo Essayist
Bedyńska examines both new social phenomenon and traditions that have passed away. In 2008 she created a reportage on challenging patriarchy in the family. For the project Męska Rzecz (A Manly Thing) she photographed fathers who stay with children at home whilst their wives pursue professional careers. Matkopolko and Z dzieckiem pod biurkiem (With a Children Under the Desk) showed women trying to conjoin the role of mother and the role of person being professionally active. The artist observes appearances that have recently been inaccessible for photographers. In Świątynie rozkoszy (Temples of Pleasure) she captures disorderly houses, while in Męska miłość (Manly Love) – as the title suggests – love between men is portrayed. In 2012 Bedyńska created the multimedia project Love is in the Air that talks about the social infertility of contemporary women.
All Bedyńska’s reportages suit the tradition of photo essays, developed in the 1950s by the American photographer William Eugene Smith. The protagonist is always in the foreground, while a graphical representation of what the protagonist has to face remains in the background.
In 2009 Bedyńska developed the project Jedna ciąża, dwudziestu (One Pregnancy, Twenty…) in which the artist decided for the very first time to stay on the other side of the camera – as the subject of the photograph. The artist asked five male and four female photographers, including Maciej Zienkiewicz, Michał Mutor, Alina Gajdanowicz, Ewa Łowżył, Monika Bereżecka, Andrzej Świetlik, Mikołaj Grynberg, and Paweł Kiszkiel, to participate in the project.
The most memorable was the session with Ewa Łowżył, who decided to show me in a very naturalistic way. It was an act which demanded more courage from me, but I knew that as the conceiver and the photographed object I needed to submit to artist’s vision. Ewa was just after a hard experience of confinement and early motherhood, so she arranged me in the situation of hospitalised oppression which she'd recently experienced.
Stepping away from photography
In 2013 the photographer was honoured with a prize in the prestigious World Press Photo contest for one of her photographs in the White Power cycle that shows portraits of people (particularly teenagers) who have albinism.
During the realization of those photographs it was incredible to see what happens to children when they become my objects. I photographed young people who are most of the time hidden, whom we do not want to see, nor photograph. They do not fit into the established canons of beauty, here they were in the centre of interest and main stars though. I was able to see the way they were growing in front of the camera, the way pride and self-confidence are filling them up.