1-24.07.2022 FOTO-GEN Gallery of the Center for Culture and Art in Wroclaw
An exhibition of 30 photographs by the doyens of Polish photography, gathered in one exhibition at one place and time. Tens of thousands of photographs - mostly on film in various sizes - from small picture to studio sizes. Dozens of different cameras, thousands of different locations, countless models - less often models, artists, ordinary and extraordinary people, events. Politicians (sometimes), poets, great actresses and actors, directors - those with Oscars and those without. Women loved and admired. Dressed up. And naked. Landscapes of Poland and other countries. Ruins of cities. Human toil. Joy and sorrow. Life in all its glory. One could enumerate the subjects of our heroes' photos so endlessly. All three photographed more or less at the same time.
But the fastest to start was Thaddeus. Already during the Second World War. It was he who was absorbed by the life of wartime Warsaw and its post-war ruins... By the 1950s, all three were already earning a living with their eye. It's interesting that only one eye was enough for photography back then. But what an eye! Each of them looked through the lens in a different way. Rolke often took to the streets. Neugebauer worked more often in improvised studios, and Plewinski spent more and more time in the theaters of Krakow. Then magazines, theaters, films, fashion and the street. And so it remains for them now... Jerzy Neugebauer no longer photographs. His most important series are his photos from 1975. He was the only one to photograph Artur Rubinstein's last concert in Poland. Two photos from this series are shown in the exhibition.
Tadeusz Rolke is constantly creating. He travels the country opening exhibitions and taking pictures of models, which have become his life's passion. Although, as he says himself, it is the photographs of the series that occupied and occupies the artist for the last 20 years of his life - "Here We Were" are the essence of his work. Wojciech Plewinski - the most organized of the three. Dozens of great series, documents of the past time. A large and organized archive. And with him perhaps the most important is the series from Wojciech's first trip abroad dedicated to Italy in 1957. Three Tenors of Photography. Three different personalities, three different ways of looking at the world, three different styles, sensitivities and everything we find in the word "tenor." One exhibition that for the first and only time will allow these Three Tenors to meet on the one and only - the most important stage that is life.
Invited, Waldemar Plusa curator
FOTO-GEN Gallery of the Center for Culture and Art in Wroclaw
pl. bpa Nankiera 8, 50-140 Wrocław | www.fotogen.okis.pl
Media patronage for the event was provided by the quarterly magazine Fotografia
