07.12.2024 - 04.05.2025 / MuFo / Krakow / The opening of the exhibition on December 6 at 6 pm.
It is hard to imagine the history of Polish photography without her work: the humanistic series "Little Man" and "Time of Passing" or, finally, the monumental "Sociological Record." The exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Krakow will show the lesser-known, lyrical face of Zofia Rydet, one of Poland's greatest photographers.
"Zofia Rydet. A World of Feelings and Imagination" will allow viewers to get acquainted with the photographer's magnum opus - a series of photographic collages, which the author worked on before starting "Sociological Record." The works in the "World of Feelings and Imagination" series, often composed of fragments of earlier photographs, may seem surprising to viewers accustomed to Rydet's reportorial frames. These surreal collages deal with the most important matters. In the words of the author, the works in this series: "they speak about a man endangered from the moment of his birth, about his feelings and desires, about loneliness, fear from which only love saves, about the fear of annihilation and the tragedy of passing."
The exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Cracow will be the first museum show of this series in years, consisting of about 100 works, divided by the author into 15 thematic cycles. They concern both universal human experiences ("Birth", "Motherhood", "Transformations") and the experiences of the generation to which Zofia Rydet belonged. In "The World of Feelings and Imagination," as in no other work of the photographer, the experiences of war and the Holocaust resound, which can resonate with the geopolitical reality surrounding us today.
"Zofia Rydet. A World of Feelings and Imagination" will also be an opportunity to look at the artist's masterful technique - her collages, created from prints and re-photographed, are constructed with such precision that, were it not for their unrealistic nature, they could be considered photographs. Thanks to the archival research of the curator, Karol Hordziej, the exhibition will feature a number of "matrices," i.e. collages before they were finally captured in a photograph.