Writing that Wojciech Zawadzki was a great photographer is the same truism as writing that a great poet was, for example, a certain Slovakian. This everyone knows.
Like any "seriousness," Wojciech Zawadzki continues to have an impact even after his death, which came for him in 2017. Less than five years later, or more precisely, from February 8 to March 18, 2022, in the extraordinary exhibition interiors of the Old Mine in Walbrzych, that is, the Walbrzych Art Gallery BWA, as part of the 6th Walbrzych Weekend of Photography organized by the Walbrzych Photography Club, Janek Zawadzki, son of Wojciech, recalled his father's photographic series entitled "My America."
We met with Janek and talked longer. When I found out that he also photographs, I asked him to send scans of his photography. And what did it turn out? That the apple doesn't fall far from the apple tree. Well, young Zawadzki creates in the same classic technology and style as his father - and here we have a large-format 4×5 inch camera, a black and white negative, prints - contact and enlargements - on baryta paper, with the obligatory black frame. "Americas" of Janek and Wojtek, however, are different; while in the older one, at least in the "My America" series, open and even expansive views of the city (vedutas) or fragments of it dominate, in the younger one the world depicted is more "tight" and limited to several meters high areas "taken off" in the photographs. Wojtek seems to be saying - look what strange places, spaces can be found around us, provided one is able to open his eyes wide and with them "see" these magnificences, and then record them on light-sensitive material. Wojtek, through his immortalization in photography, ennobles places that in the common perception seem ugly or even repulsive. And although I don't think he intended to do so, he brings out from the seemingly banal reality, what we used to call beauty; today we rarely use this word in reference to photographic images, because, not knowing why, we prefer to talk about "visual values", "aesthetic", "photogenic" and many, many other properties. Janek, unlike Wojtek, frames tightly and it is clear that he wants to achieve "beautiful", economical images. He succeeds in doing so. In his photography, in the one I know, I see more Eva Rubinstein, Andrzej Jerzy Lech and Bogdan Konopka than Wojtek Zawadzki, which is in no way an accusation. Janek simply grew up in these atmospheres and found himself in them. Perhaps only now, after his father's death, did he dare to show his photography.
Janek must listen carefully to himself to find topics that will be in line with his inner self
I'm sure that someday he will find his own path in photography and go in different directions than his masters. If he is serious about continuing the life path his father took, for his own sake and - let's not be afraid of big words - photography's sake, Janek must listen carefully to himself to find subjects and form that will be in line with his inner self. He has certainly inherited the talent, or the so-called eye, and mastered the workshop (he flawlessly shot the colors and tonality of his father's original prints, preparing some of the copies for the Walbrzych exhibition - they were indistinguishable from Wojtek's enlargements), so we can follow his photographic development with confidence. Children of famous people, not only photographers, have both uphill and downhill at the same time. From birth they have "that" surname, so it's hard not to pay attention to them, but on the other hand - the curse of comparisons hangs over them all the time - have they already matched or already surpassed? Art, this is not racing and places on the podium. Here the most important thing is sincerity and fidelity to oneself.
Here is how the author himself - Wojtek Zawadzki - wrote about his project:
My America
I began realizing the "My America" project in 1997. Observing the surrounding urban landscape in Jelenia Gora, where I found myself almost by accident 13 years earlier and settled permanently, as well as the destruction of the industrial landscape of Walbrzych, observed by me mainly from the windows of the train Wroclaw - Jelenia Gora, I began to record these elements over time, aware of their uniqueness in a situation of irreversible disappearance. In my opinion, this was connected with the awareness of the change of era - entering the 21st century. And so in the case of Walbrzych, where the previous industrial landscape has changed and continues to change quite rapidly into a specific civilization "desert", which will naturally be filled with a new form of human activity. Therefore, it is worth recording this stage. For the time being, it is a kind of "terra incognito", which should perhaps be rediscovered for the documentary. Old tenements, courtyards, remains of industrial plants and decommissioned buildings of the Jelenia Góra railway station confirm the existence of the passage of time and the fact of its transience.
Their Presence in my photographs is justified by their persistence in time and emanation of a peculiar energy, sometimes difficult to "receive". This is what makes them different from the products of current human thought. They are, of a kind, monuments. Monuments, associated more by the existence of time than really existing. Nevertheless, they exist. They are worthy of photographic registration. The immobility and rawness of black-and-white photography, as opposed to other, more modern means of recording, seems most appropriate here.
The ordinary - seemingly - reality of allotment gardens, broken facades of tenement houses, market stalls, backyard car garages and similar phenomena of our civilization, no doubt fading over a period of time far shorter than the duration of a well-fixed and washed-out black-and-white print. I hope that these photographs in a few decades will foster the same emotions with which we view old, yellowed pre-war photographs today. That they will attest to the existence of this reality. Photographing in such a way, and not in a different way, making a careful choice of frame, atmospheric conditions and light, I try, on the one hand, to create images that are on the borderline of document and "artistic photography", and on the other hand, through the archaic nature of the photographic process - the use of an old wooden large-format camera, feeling sometimes like a real Christopher Columbus, discovering his real America, with the help of a sailing ship in the age of nuclear and electron technology, to take care of the real autonomy of photography.
Wojciech Zawadzki (1950) - has practiced photography since the 1970s. He exerted a great influence on the constitution of the "elementary photography" trend (1970s) and "pure photography" (1980s). Member of the Union of Polish Artists Photographers. Curator of the "Corridor" Gallery of the Jelenia Góra Cultural Center. Lecturer in photography at the Higher School of Photography in Warsaw, Zielona Gora, manager and lecturer at the Higher School of Photography in Jelenia Gora, now a two-year college called "Jelenia Gora School of Photography". He has also lectured abroad, including in Denmark. Zawadzki has exhibited at home and abroad. Between 1998 and 2008, he realized two major author's exhibitions "My America" and "Olszewskiego 11", which were presented in the most important galleries in Poland. His photographs are in the collections of the Art Museum in Lodz, the National Museum in Wroclaw, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hunfeld (Germany), the Silesian Collection of Contemporary Art. He passed away on June 22, 2017 in Jelenia Gora.
Photographs by Wojtek Zawadzki, also from the series "My America" can be purchased in our store, or in the KF Gallery
Wojciech Zawadzki, My America, Jelenia Góra, 1997-2003
Gelatin-silver print
Paper dimensions 41 x 30 cm
Dimensions of the image 35 x 27.5 cm
Dimensions of the author's passe-partout 60 x 50 cm
Signed on passe-partout
a.p. 3/10
F
