Tadeusz Sumiński, "Generators", 1962. Courtesy of Asymetria Gallery
Among the highlights of Paris Photo 2012 is a major exhibition devoted to Polish photography after 1945, curated by Warsaw's Asymetria Gallery. A contemporary angle comes courtesy of several international galleries representing promising talents of today's generation to round out a portrait of Polish photography past and present
"I'm interested in photography especially the 1950s, '60s and '70s", says Rafał Lewandowski, director of the Asymetria Gallery, which functions as an archive of Polish artistic photography of the 20th century, particularly the period just after the Second World War. The legendary figures of Jerzy Lewczyński, Zofia Rydet, Henryk Makarewicz, Wiktor Pental and Tadeusz Sumiński are revived to explore their images of the political vision of an ideal society based on bureaucratic plans of action, and the way that is constructed and reconstructed within the photographer's lens. This ties in Constructivism, one of the strong artistic currents of the post-war period while reviewing the ultimate fruit of these sociopolitical endeavours.
Pental and Makarewicz's photographs of Nowa Huta, Poland's "first socialist city", which was built outside of Kraków in 1949, are endowed with a generous dose of humour, incorporating human elements into otherwise drab, geometric structures that were constructed alongside the Lenin Steelworks. One image shows a young swimmer leaping into a pool in perfect form as a symbol of "the ideal city". These photographs capture the everyday life of Poles in Nowa Huta, a city that was planned out in every way to serve as a "laboratory to produce the ideal socialist being", while also symbolising the quality of life for Poles in other places across the country.
Tadeusz Sumiński's photographs of industrial structures around Poland exemplify his fascination with industrial progress in the mid-20th century, while Zofia Rydet focuses her lens on children in Poland and other communist nations. Jerzy Lewczyński's constructivist and surrealist images present a singular way of observing reality, highly influenced by the evolving trend of conceptualism between the 1950s and 1970s.
These classics of Polish photography are set alongside new works by two artists born in the 1980s, Krzysztof Pijarski and Tomasz Szerszeń, both of whom are represented by Asymetria. Each refers to this heritage, one by tracing the fates of "toppled effigies" of communism, the monuments and the heroes of the past, the other using collage to compile an image of everyday Polish life in the 1960s. The exhibition has been curated by the Asymetria Gallery in cooperation with the Imago Mundi Foundation and the Archeology of Photography Foundation.
The Polish presence at Paris Photo is extended by international galleries representing today's generation of Polish photographers. The Naples-based gallery Guido Costa Projects presents works of Robert Kuśmirowski, a photographer, sculptor, performance artist and installation artist who plays on the remnants of history and its authenticity. His video work Canal, presented this year at Paris Photo, follows the artist as he explores the sewer system of Łódź, parts of which are no longer used, searching for traces of the past, for objects left behind by human beings. Eric Franck Fine Art presents the album Eter, featuring Katarzyna Mirczak's latest projects, including Tools, a morbid variation on the still life in which colour photographs show objects used in criminal acts. In 2010 Mirczak showed her Special Characteristics project at Paris Photo, series of photographs documenting the collection of tattoos collected by the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
The reportage photography of Tomasz Gudzowaty, an eight-time World Press Photo winner, is available at Paris Photo from the German publisher Hatje Cantz. Rafał Milach's album 7 Rooms is among 20 nominees for New York's Aperture Foundation Award for best first photographic publication (First Photobook). The winner will be announced on the 16th of November, and receives a prize of $10,000.
The Paris Photo Fair's 2012 edition takes place between the 15th and 18th of November at the Grand Palais on Avenue Winston Churchill in Paris. It is among the world's important events devoted to the art of photography past and present, with more than 100 galleries participating every year.
For more information, see: www.parisphoto.com.
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Paris Photo, Imago Mundi, own sources