Gallery of Photography OD ZPAF / Wroclaw, 4 Św. Marcina St. / Vernissage: 9.09.2024 / 6 pm Duration of the exhibition: 9-29.09.2024
The works of four Polish photographers use Robert Frank's critical method in describing national identity. They decided to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this artist's birth with a display of their observations of Polish society over the past decades.
Robert Frank (1924-2019) became a legend in world photography with his 1958 album "Americans." This photographer, originally from Switzerland, was awarded a prestigious grant from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1955, enabling him to travel around the US to illustrate the current state of that society. By then, Frank already had a body of work in the form of photographs from his travels in South America and several years of work in New York. In a letter to his parents in 1955, he wrote that "America is an interesting country, but there are many things here that I don't like and will never accept. This is also what I try to show in my pictures."
Robert Frank's album was a manifestation of a new trend in world photography, which, from a formal point of view, was considered an opposition to the sophisticated aesthetics of "decisive moments." This trend also included the work of such prominent American photographers as William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander. They usually recorded dynamic situations in public space, extracting expression from the spontaneously manifested behavior of people, and the credibility of these attestations pushed aside issues of workshop correctness. Robert Frank's photographs, however, have a distinct character in this group, being the most personal and distanced from American identity.
In Polish photography since the middle of the 20th century, the influence of this trend, represented by Robert Frank's "Americans," made itself known, despite the different political context. Socialism imposed on Polish society did not enjoy its support, while the fascination with the level of technology and mass consumption achieved in Western countries was widespread. The push for the development of heavy industry and nationalization was accompanied by poor quality production, shortages of supplies, low wages and restrictions on civil liberties. Therefore, independent documentations of current social life emanated criticism or irony towards this reality, confronting reality with propaganda slogans.
Reasons for skepticism about the conditions of modern life were therefore quite different in Poland than in Robert Frank's description of America. In addition, a key issue in Poland was the preservation of cultural identity in the face of pressure from the Marxist doctrine of communism, so a special role was played by conservative references to folk culture, nature and religious traditions. A significant conclusion in the consideration of the national character of Poles was brought by the great 1979 intermedia exhibition Poles Self-Portrait, which gave priority to the Romantic tradition.
The works of the four Polish photographers that make up this exhibition go beyond such a tradition and can be assumed to use Robert Frank's critical method in their descriptions of national identity. They decided to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this artist's birth with a display of their observations of Polish society over the past decades. The most distant in time here is a photo essay Zenon Harasym from 1969 made in Wroclaw on the grounds of the so-called "amusement park." The author soon showed this kind of subject matter in his first exhibition "Man Among Men". The place of ludic amusements was an ideal stage for observing a rich gallery of types representing different generations, their behavior and the fashion of the time, which the photographer also took excellent advantage of. It is apparent that he worked in an open manner, imposing his presence on people, to which many reacted with reserve and suspicion. As a rule, in the foreground of the photos their presence is manifested by people making eye contact with the photographer, while the background is filled with an anonymous crowd, where prominent among others are Roma people and uniformed militiamen. The atmosphere of this "town" is by no means cheerful, which was probably also influenced by the events of the previous year related to social protests and their pacification.
In turn Stanislaw Kulawiak presents a set of photographs taken during an outdoor stay in Bystrzyca Klodzka in 1977. As in the case of Zenon Harasym's works, his account preserves the unity of place and time. However, Kulawiak's photographs do not give the impression of confrontation, but rather we see in them the author's concern to indicate the closeness of relations between the residents, as well as their unforced and even confidential contact with the photographer. We observe the daily busyness and resourcefulness of people functioning in a rather uncomfortable environment.
The atmosphere of frozen reality in a state caused by the effects of war is also conveyed by photographs Jerzy Ochonski made in the 1970s and 1980s in Krakow's historic Jewish enclave, the Kazimierz district. The author, like Stanislaw Kulawiak, in the 1970s was a member of the Krakow-based SEM Photographic Creative Group and was involved in various documentation campaigns. Ochonski systematically visited the place and recorded the manifestations of its functioning: prayers in the synagogue, funerals, few passers-by, children playing in the ruins, destroyed facades of buildings and traces of former activity.
Unlike the three aforementioned historical accounts in the fourth set of Przemek Piwowar presents photographs taken in various parts of Poland between 2006 and 2023, i.e. after the systemic transformation and during the period of radical modernization of the country. What is striking is the incommensurability of its depictions to those of previous documentation. They are dominated by people of hard-to-define provenance busy with completely new rituals, in altered decorations. Only portraits of Hasidim, Orthodox Jews visiting cult sites in their history, are a reference to the past. Other depictions have vague contexts in which children, indifferent to the baggage of history, evidently feel most comfortable.
Although the narrative of the Polish photographers - unlike Robert Frank's one-person work - is dissected in several voices, in all these cases a sincere reflection on the identity of the observed society appeals to us. As Jack Kerouac wrote about Robert Frank's photographs, such observations cease to be incidental or superficial if they make us feel the mysterious potential of their meanings.
Text: Adam Sobota
Photographs: Zenon Harasym, Stanislaw Kulawiak, Jerzy Ochonski, Przemek Piwowar
