Fotoplastikon is an appliance popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, enabling the viewers to watch changing three-dimensional photographs. Fotoplastikon at Aleje Jerozolimskie 51 is unique, it was created at the beginning of the 20th century and, with few breaks, worked during the whole century in the same location. Today it is the only working device of this type in Poland and one of very few in the world. In the collection of Fotoplastikon there are over 3000 original photographs from various parts of the world, starting with photographs recording the opening of the Suez Canal, expedition on Spitzbergen, the wedding of Princess Anna, Japan that we do not know, Warsaw at the turn of the century. Since the beginning it has enabled more than original entertainment. During the years before the War it fulfilled educational function, providing up-to-date photographs of the most remote and inaccessible places of the world. During the War, not under the Nazi control, provided the Warsaw citizens with breathing space and was one of the contact points of the underground. After the War, in 1940s and 1950s, it was very popular due to presentation of photographs from the West, showing cities that could not be entered. The shows were accompanied jazz music played from the first records, brought to Poland through private channels, which made Fotoplastikon the place of meetings of beatniks persecuted by the government. Voted a few years earlier by Warsaw citizens the magical place of the capital and in 2008 taken by care of the Warsaw Rising Museum, Fotoplastikon is an imperishable component of Warsaw identity.
Fotoplastikon Warszawski
Aleje Jerozolimskie 51 back-premises
www.fotoplastikonwarszawski.pl
curator: Monika Bończa Tomaszewska
exhibition: 30.04 through 29.05: Chris Niedenthal „Warsaw”, contemporary stereoscopic photographs
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