Misteria definitely stands out among Bujak's immensely rich oeuvre (over one hundred photobooks published). The volume from 1989 combines black and white photographs with colour ones, and constitutes a significant reference point both for the author and for the following generations of photographers (for instance, Wojciech Wilczyk's Kalwaria from 2010). It is hard to find another publication which depicts the popular religiosity and devotional traditions in Poland in an equally powerful and complex way. Bujak offers a convincing combination of the gaze of an engaged and empathic participant of the Passion plays with a more distanced perspective of a photojournalist. He observes the priests leading the rituals and the Church's dignitaries, as well as the believers following them; he presents the intimacy of a monk's cell and the mass and ludic character of a cult. He comes close to take portraits and shot details as well as steps back, showing the preparations and rituals in a wide landscape angle. The whole also, or maybe most of all, gives an impression of an exceptional social document depicting an almost primal force and sincerity of the traditional Passion plays. In this sense, the book exceeds its strictly religious nature, becoming an exceptional record of social emotions that are otherwise marginalised within the official culture (especially in the times of the Polish People's Republic, but also contemporarily). When analysing Misteria in the context of politics, it is also worth noting that Bujak's photographs of the ceremonial life of Polish Calvaries documented and exposed a kind of crowd that differed from the one forced by the PRL propaganda. The use of an engaged, common, but faithful crowd was surely one of the reasons these pictures didn't enter the mainstream sooner.
Unlike in the later, mass-produced albums, Bujak selected the photographic material in Misteria very carefully. He emphasized the expressive features of the photographs with the graphic layout (spreads and pairings of images). The photographs and accompanying text (also authored by Bujak) are arranged according to the logic of the Passion plays. The individual chapters refer to the order of the ceremony and constitute a rather complete documentation of the Calvary Passion plays across Poland (Kalwaria Pacławska, St. Anne Mountain, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, but also the Russian Orthodox Grabarka). This is a rare, convincing work, in which the artistic expression of the mostly black and white photographs functions in an undisturbed synergy with the expressiveness and incisiveness of a documentary record.
photographs: Adam Bujak
text: Adam Bujak
graphic design: Hubert Hilscher
publisher: Sport i Turystyka, Warsaw
year of publication: 1989
volume: 300 pages
format: 26 x 27 cm
cover: cardboard hardcover, coated
print run: unknown
ISBN 83-217-2538-4