accompanying events
Kasia Nowak, Milan Przybyla, Halina Sikora, Natalia Urbuś, Joanna Wider
“Minotaurs on Rails”
The exhibition is a culmination of a few months of struggle by five finalists to win a competition for the first ever ZTF creative scholarship. It was announced in the Spring of 2009 and 12 authors took part in it. The idea behind the competition centered on a complete lack of any limitations to the formal or conceptual aspects of the work.
“The presented photograph collections can be characterized by thematic and formal diversity. When judging the work, the jury paid attention to authorial pronouncements which went beyond technical and aesthetic correctness and headed toward presenting an original, personal vision of the world. Each of the five authors uses photographic language differently. Joanna Wider delves into the mythical world of the minotaur using photomontage, so that she can talk about loneliness and alienation. Natalia Urbuś asks questions about the functioning of young people in a reality full of real and imagined dangers using dynamic and somewhat provocative images of girls. On the other hand Halina Sikora and Milan Przybyła represent a trend in documentary and journalistic photography. Halina Sikora concentrates of presenting a person who is ill and is on the fringes of “normal” life. Milan Przybyła describes his professional environment with a dose of humor and sensitivity. Katarzyna Nowak oscillates between a poetic vision and a subjective account of common reality,” professor Witold Jacyków, Competition Jury Chief, summarizes.
The Zaolziańskie Photography Association (ZTF) was formally created in 2001. The Association is not strictly speaking a creative group, it does not have its own program or an artistic manifest. Its members (currently there are more than 40) are amateurs as well as professional photographers. They are mostly Poles from the Zaolzie region. In recent years the ranks of the ZTF have been reinforced by young photography lovers. The ZTF focuses its activities on the organization of monthly mini open-air photography exhibitions. These are outings during which the photographers commit themselves to a joint theme. Every year ZTF members and students meet at a five day open-air event in the Beskidy mountains, where they invite professionals and significant figures from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Natural spheres of activity are also individual and group exhibitions. Last year the ZTF presented the work of six of its members in Warsaw at an exhibition entitled “Bridges” as part of the V Warsaw Festival of Art Photography.