Opening on Monday, July 11 at 17:00, exhibition until August 31, 2022 / Zamosc Town Hall Photo Gallery, Rynek Wielki 13
"f/5,6"
These photos will be a discovery - many of them are published for the first time. Black and white, taken with Leica, with a 50mm lens. Mostly with an aperture of 5.6 (hence the title of the album and the exhibition). Lodz, 1960s - people on the street, in the yards of tenement houses, in the park, in an amusement park. Expressive faces, faces, gestures. Inter-personal game, reminiscent of dance, having something of a love ritual, also something of a circus. A world of surprises. The choice of images itself is also surprising - we move from Lodz's Poniatowski Park to Central Park in New York. At first it seems that these black-and-white, generic scenes of streets and backyards are reportage from some distant civilization. But while these photos are full of moral detail, they are not dominated by a sociologist's gaze. They are not about Poland. This is neither another judgment on the People's Republic of Poland, nor a nostalgic return to the days of youth. The tension here comes from the photographer's relationship with reality. Regardless of when and where these photos were taken, each is a whole world laid bare before us, captured in a unique moment.
The biggest difference is that technology and the internet has speeded everything up tremendously in just a few years. We take the instant transmission of photos and text for granted. As a photojournalist for 60 years, I well recall a different time when I would send packages of undeveloped rolls of film with hand written captions to editors all across the world. DHL and FedEx were vital for my international work, even the regular mail system on occasion. Then digital cameras and the internet came along, changing everything, and a lot more time had to be spent at the computer. Newspapers were the first to take advantage of the technology as they require a quick turnaround for news stories and photo quality was less demanding. It took longer for color magazines to adapt, the sort I worked with, who had to wait until digital photography improved. Online media didn't exist at all until relatively recently but it certainly didn't kill print media, as some predicted. My photos from that era are never staged - says Dziworski -. They are coming out.
Day after day, there were times, eight hours of shooting. Zbyszek Rybczynski said: wherever I go, something interesting happens. That's how it was with me, too. At first nothing happens. Then only, if you have patience, the dance with reality begins. Seemingly everything is over, a normal person says "goodbye," and that's when you have to take pictures! And then comes that one moment - the Bressonian "was gone". After long training, you can get ahead of it by fractions of a second. Photography is a lurking for that one moment when reality will set in on its own. For that you have to be lucky.
And I have them. I'm watching two plans, I'm timing them together. Three - it's incredible happiness that comes into your frame. A director could set it up for himself - I anticipate.
Excerpts from an essay by Tadeusz Sobolewski "Dance of Reality"., featured in the album "f/5.6"
Bogdan Dziworski's "f/5.6" exhibition at Zamosc's Ratusz Gallery.
Rynek Wielki 13 (town hall - first floor)
tel. 509 823 413 / e-mail: ztf@ztf.pl
www.ztf.pl
Bogdan Dziworski Was born in Lodz in 1941. In 1965, he graduated from the Department of Cinematography at the National Film School in Lodz. In 1994 he received his doctorate, and in 2002 he became a full professor. He has lectured at the National Film School in Lodz, the Radio and Television Department of the University of Silesia in Katowice and the Warsaw Film School. He has worked with the Polish Film Chronicle, the Educational Film Studio in Lodz and the Film Realization Company "Film Teams". He is the author of many documentaries, mainly devoted to sports. Many of them have achieved "cult" status and still have their admirers today. Dziworski, considered a master of street photography and compared to Henri Cartier-Bresson, never treated photography as a profession. And although he never parted with his Leica camera-photographic work was for him a complement to his profession as a cinematographer, screenwriter and film director. He is also an honorary member of the Union of Polish Artists Photographers. His work with moving images is directly reflected in the photographic record - the aesthetics of his photographs are imbued with the spirit of the Polish film school.
For many years Dziworski took his photos "in the drawer" - he did not organize exhibitions or publish them. His first album was already published in the early 1980s in Vienna, but we waited another ten years for the first Polish exhibitions, and twenty years for a publication.
Bogdan Dziworski is currently represented by 6×7 Leica Gallery Warsaw - the publisher of the f/5.6 album and organizer of the exhibition of the same title.
