The Warsaw Festival of Art Photography 2010 once again brings us closer to, and invites us to discuss, photography and its place in art. The artistic advantages of this medium are presented in an extraordinarily varied manner. The cycle will consist of as much as fifty events, which will take place throughout the month in prestigious galleries and Warsaw’s institutes of culture. It has already become tradition that the festival program consists of a competition which will give visitors a chance to become familiar with the work of young Polish and, this year also, German artists. The main program involves a series of separate accompanying events, seminars, lectures and workshops.
The goal of the events is to show the varied nature, formal coherency, workshop, themes and content of modern photography in the context of two Central European countries: Poland and Germany.
The theme which cements the series of events (six exhibitions and a seminar are about German photography), prepared by German curators, Inga Schneider and Sebastian Hau, is the sentimentality of German photography and the challenge that is the articulation of feelings in the photographic recording. The goal of the exhibitions is also the depiction of a different, more ‘humane’ image of Germany as well as trying to change the stereotypical view of the country held by Poles. The German presentations will take place under a joint title: “Dojczland ... mit freundlichen Grüßen,” [Germany…with regards], which refers to the title of Andrzej Stasiuk’s book “Dojczland“.
Representatives of various generations, schools of thought and genres can be found among the German artists. These include Arno Fischer and Chargesheimer, the authors of photographs from the fifties and sixties depicting cities in the process of being rebuilt after the war and which stood at the threshold of constant political divisions, such as Cologne or Berlin. Wolfgang Zurborn shows unique images of the industrial metropolis Bielefeld, which he registers in the shape of an individualized and extremely suggestive photographic note, almost akin to the art of painting, full of unconventional shots, views and perspectives. Oliver Kern tries to define national identity through the registration symbols and signs present in everyday Germany as well as daily human existence in distant, forgotten corners of the country. Thekla Ehling concentrates on her immediate surroundings and depicts moving stories of those closest to her using simple narratives. Peter Piller works with ‘ready’ material, photographs from local newspaper supplements, arranged into a few dozen thematic groups, which reflect on the way in which the viewer is manipulated through ever-present images in the mass media.
As part of the seminars on German photography, we would like to present a series of lectures and meetings, speakers will include: Inga Schneider (“New tendencies in German photography”), Markus Schaden (“German photographic publishing houses“), Sebastian Hau (“The Problem of identity and registering of emotion in German photography“), Oliver Kern, (“The german view, about one‘s own photography“) and Thomas Martin and Hannes Gieseler (a film and lecture onWolfgang Zurborn.
Other Polish propositions on German photography include a seminar by Jerzy Lewczynski about Wilhelm van Blandowski or the exhibition entitled “A Forgotten Germany in 3D” in Fotoplastikon.
This year’s edition of the festival will also see the presentation of work by Polish artists from various generations. There will be no prevailing theme: on the one hand it will deal with historical aspects, on the other, it will be a summation of recent artistic activities by famous artists, those that have taken part in the festival before, as well as those that are debuting. Fragments of the history of Polish photography will be illustrated by collective presentations such as “Artistic Photography of the Interwar Period based on the work of Zofia Chometowska, Anatol Wecławski and his collegues: Jan Bulhak, Marian Dederko and Boleslaw Gardulski,“ “UN-EXTINGIUSHED. – Portraits of women from the archive collection of the KARTA Institute”; “The Eternity of Distant Roads by Zofia Rydet“; a pre-auction exhibition from the Seventh Auction of Polish Photographic Collective Works. The festival will also include individual exhibitions. We will also entertain classic Polish photographers and new media artists: Hieronim Neumann, Piotr Wolynski, Bogdan Konopka and others.
From thematic content, which will be particularly explored during this year's festival, it is worth paying particular attention to the specific climate and colour of cities or countries visited by the authors. The visions are extremely sublime and far removed from traditional depictions, registered through the prism of one's own temperament or emotion. These include “New York“ by Eustachy Kossakowski; “Island“ by Iza Jaroszewska, “Nepal: Everyday Life” by Ewa Miazek, “W-wa” by Jan Jakub Wyganowski and “Uganda, Uganda” by Janusz Kokot.
One of the goals set out in the festival is the promotion of artists who are at the threshold of their artistic careers, artists who are experimenting with the photographic medium in the field of arts. Apart from the post-competition exhibitions, young photography will also be depicted by thematic, collective student exhibitions (project “12“ by students from The Warsaw Academy of Art (ASP); young Slovakian photography – “A Body in Slovak“ and the German – "Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years").
We are also presenting new work by authors from the young and middle-aged generations some of which have been our guests at previous editions of the festival. These include “Prof. Wojciech Prazmowski's Diploma Students: Iza Zdziebko, Grzegorz Mart, Joanna Chudy,” the “Zorka Project” by Monika Berezecka, Monika Redzisz with a new project called “Drag Queen” and Maurycy Gomulicki a believer of the 'culture of pleasure' with the exhibition entitled “Minimal Fetish.” There will also be a cycle of individual exhibitions showing various views and ideas for registering reality by artists, such as Agata Zbylut, Maciej Blonski, Aleksandra Chrapowicka, Dominika Naborowska, Agnieszka Dellfina, Karma Fryc, Katarzyna Krynska, Damian Chrobak, Wojtek Sienkiewicz, Robert Rajner or Patryk Karbowski e.t.c.
The festival will also not be lacking in our friends and foreign guests from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Prof. Vladimír Biegus and Tomáš Posuch have prepared an exhibition, which recently premiered at the Prussian Photo Biennale – “Nowe Zycie, Nowy Dokument / New Life, New Document.“ The exhibition is a depiction of the current tendencies in Czech, Hungarian and Slovakian documentary photography (its participants include: Katerina Drzkova, Hana Jakrlova, Jan Vaca, Matias Misetics, Peter Szabo Petendi, Krisztina Erdei, Symon Kliman, Jozef Ondzik, Martin Kollar, Grzegorz Klatka, Rafal Milach and Urszula Tarasewicz).
Photography is once again presented as a medium with unlimited possibilities for artistic expression. It gives the opportunity to express personal experiences and aspirations, in the form of documenting family and personal life, as well as a subjective note from journeys to near and distant, known and unknown corners, or in the context of the WFFA, mainly as a tool which awakens and cements purely aesthetic feelings.
We hope that the program will allow visitors to learn about the many aspects of modern photography. That it will show its most interesting and intriguing sides well as widening the discourse about photography in the context of art, which has accompanied the Warsaw Festival of Artistic Photography for some years.
Festival curator: Magdalena Durda-Dmitruk