Fotografika – Edward Hartwig | #photography & visual arts

Fotografika is commonly recognised as the major, or even the only, art photo album released before the end of the 1970s, and not without reason.

It is definitely a model and high-quality example of its genre. With this book, Edward Hartwig not only established himself as the heir to the legacy of Jan Bułhak, the founder of fotografika, but most of all proposed his own modernised formula for artistic photography. For Hartwig, it is a formalism that is modern and free of national obligations, and according to which a photograph's visual expression comes before its content. The bold reference to Bułhak's original term fotografika finds an almost literal justification in its relationship to graphics (grafika), as the author introduces various means of applying distinct graphic qualities to his photographs. In other words, if Bułhak softened contrast in his blow-ups, then Hartwig intensifies it. In lieu of the painterly tones of artistic photography (i.e. Bułhak's fotografika), comes the graphic tinge (so, Hartwig's fotografika).

In Fotografika, the author shows off with diverse variants of shots, inventing abstract structures, bold framing, and elements of photomontage. The prints are heavily post-produced in the darkroom, using a wide variety of techniques (including isohelia). This beautiful and versatile volume, both in terms of themes and techniques, printed in a monumental, almost square-like format, is a kind of sample book for practitioners of artistic photography. It was re-released (with slightly modified layout) very quickly, as well as in foreign language versions, thus not only becoming an export product of the liberalised cultural politics of comrade Gomułka, but also a grand manifesto of photographic arts practised by the environment of the Association of Polish Artists Photographers (ZPAF) and the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP).

Fotografika by Edward Hartwig – Image Gallery

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Fotografika is a cosmopolitan work, beginning with the stickers from international photography exhibitions and fairs reproduced on the flyleaf, to the liberal selection of topics – Polish fields intertwine with images of fishermen by the Seine, a fragment of a Parisian cathedral is juxtaposed with a picture of Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts. Hartwig positioned himself as an international artist, interested in developing a universal language of art. At the same time, his view of the world was as much visually appealing as it was straightforward. In the author's introduction, Hartwig resolutely refers to Plato's formula:

Artistic photography, as a discipline of the art, the living art of our times, resonates with its contemporaries through the new forms of representing truth and beauty.

As a matter of fact, reality was for Hartwig a predominantly visual subject, as opposed to an existential, political, or social one, which very quickly turned out to be the dead end of this formula of fotografika. Interestingly, Bułhak's pictorial photography also had universal aspirations, however, it was somewhat voluntarily reduced to a parochial dimension by means of the native photography rule. Hartwig – FIAP's excellency – is carried by aesthetics and universal formalism.

Fotografika is a visually compelling work maintaining the late avant-garde rhetoric in all its forms. Its individual photographs are very persuasive – Hartwig seduces with images of the streets of Paris, flea markets, or portraits of young women, and at the same time introduces powerful juxtapositions of photographs. The entire book is composed of spreads. Each of them bears its own title (apart from those given to individual images): Venice, Horizontal and Vertical, Contemporary Roofs, Stripes and Spots, A Bird Fair, The Province, The Earth Breeds and Rests. A list of all spreads, inserted at the end, was printed on a separate sheet, so that the reader could trace the titles of individual combinations whilst looking through the book. This method of removing captions from the main body of the book strengthens the visual purity of the piece. This publication is indeed editorially refined. The list at the end includes exemplary descriptions of the camera, lens, negative material, exposure time, aperture, and the brand and type of developer used for each image, as well as explanations of whether we are looking at a full or cropped frame. It's possible that other books like this don't exist in Poland.

Finally, Fotografika serves as a kind of repository of Hartwig's later publishing activity. We find motifs and themes that were continued in his subsequent books, such as Kulisy teatru (Theatre Backstage) and Moja ziemia (My Earth).