One can say in the shortest terms: an anthology like no other... The book was published as a scholarly work, so it also has an extensive bibliography, an index of persons and an abbreviated index of photographic techniques.
And here's an excerpt Forewords Witold Kanicki, who explains a lot: Meeting the need to lay the foundation for further research, this anthology attempts to collect and systematize texts on photography written by Polish authors and female authors over the first one hundred and fifty years of its existence. It is precisely the mentioned systematization that is one of the keys to success here - for here the whole thing, arranged in three main Parts and an Appendix, contains the following subsections: The origins of photography - from daguerreotype to calotype; Dissemination of photography; Between art and reproduction; Basics of pictorialism; Pictorialism and the new photography; The state, the nation and the social responsibilities of the artist; Socialist realism; Photography in the trap of art; From the thaw to the twilight of communist Poland; Social spaces; About photography; Avant-garde and photomontage; Colors; Advertising photography. The whole thing? For me, a revelation! I acquired this book by purchase, so in my possession there are 846 pages of a monumental and excellent work, in a word, a book important for Polish thought and theory of photography and art. The publishing reviews were written by Prof. Marianna Michalowska from Poznan (UAM) and Prof. Malgorzata Jankowska from Gdansk (ASP). I quote the former: We received a unique insight into the Polish consciousness of photography, both in an artistic and socio-political context. To quote the latter: It is also the first such comprehensive collection to draw attention to the importance of magazines (of a different nature) acting, to the extent indicated, as a communicator and open forum that ensured a wider reception, but also, in some sense, guaranteed the survival of speech.
The work on the anthology - mainly searches throughout Poland and in cities in the former Polish Republic, the one between the wars - took a good five years and would have been impossible for one person to complete. And even so, as we read in the Preface.... In the course of many years of queries, it turned out that the materials found would have allowed the publication of several independent collections. For this reason, the selection of studies presented here represents only a small section of the entire theoretical discourse around Polish photography. The enormity of the source material forced the adoption of several selection criteria. One of them became the time frame, covering only the one hundred and fifty years of photography's existence.
It is also worth mentioning methodology, because such a book - so that the work done on it is not in vain - must be precisely planned and edited. Thus, we read in the already quoted Preface.... In accordance with the principle most often guiding the creators of anthologies of statements about art, the structure of this book is based on chronological order. Three independent parts have been created, the first of which brings source texts from the 19th century out of oblivion, the second focuses on the first half of the 20th century, and the third is devoted to the most recent texts, written between 1955 and 1989. Although the issues concerning the selection of articles and the layout of the book were discussed jointly in the editorial board, the introductions to the individual parts, as well as the final selection and processing of the source materials published in them, belonged to the individual tasks of each of the researchers, who differ - despite our common field - in their art-historical workshop, methodology or even in the way they think and write about photography or art.
And I, I already own this Book, so I read, study, discover and one word keeps coming to me towards the Authors, Editors and Editors - GRACE. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen! Something like this has been missing for me for years (writing about photography, I sometimes moved in the dark, intuitively, now I no longer have to suffer and be ashamed of my own lack of competence in the area covered by the Anthology), and probably many other critics, art historians, essayists, especially lovers and teachers/lecturers of knowledge about photography, including our own, Polish thought and reflection around photography.
