September is the time when the world of culture comes back to life after the summer break. The abundance of interesting events might make one feel dizzy. But then Sopot enters the scene, a place worth visiting not only during the holiday season, which, at that time of year, becomes an important destination for photography enthusiasts and more. With this year’s theme of Transformation, the eleventh edition of the FFWRS – W Ramach Sopotu (the Frames of Sopot Festival of Photography) will take place between the 5th and 21st of September.
When one tries to find an association with FFWRS – a recognised name in the world of photography, what probably comes to mind for many is the artistic residency, exhibition of works by students from the Łódź Film School and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, and photo-monuments – photographic installations in public spaces. This year’s piece features a photograph by Witold Węgrzyn, while more of his works will be displayed at the Sierakowski Manor House. But Sopot will turn on even more charm thanks to numerous photographic series spread across the city like a precious, thoughtful treasure map with the State Art Gallery, Goyki 3 Art Inkubator, Sopot Centrum, Stan Surowy Gallery, Splot Gallery, and KIT Gallery. While a feast prepared by Paweł Klein at Sopoteka will entertain fans of photobooks.
How have the organisers and curators passed the thread of transformation through the artworks and the cityscape? You will have to visit Sopot and see for yourself. For now, we present you with seven artists worth keeping an eye on during the 2025 FFWRS.
Artistic residency
Exploring the past – Gundula Friese
The artists invited to the artistic residency (this year, the organisers decided to announce an open call) will realise their original ideas, which will then be presented during the festival opening at the State Art Gallery in Sopot. The artists invited to do so are Gundula Friese, Dagmara Barańska-Morzy, and Paweł Jaśkiewicz.
Characterised by her cautious approach and persistent observation, Gundula Friese cannot help but catch the attention. She lives in Berlin and focuses on portraying people and places. While her portraits are singular images, she also creates photographic series and films. It must be mentioned, however, that Friese has a rather unusual professional background – at one point in her career, she worked at the Berlin Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where she spent two years documenting crime scenes, perpetrators and victims, as well as dissections.
She is the author of many acclaimed photographic series, like a series of portraits, Daughters, or an Essay on Time, which explores the phenomenon of simultaneity and the influence of ancestral experiences on future generations, and the series Power of Green, created at the intersection of art and medicine. The project, created during her Sopot artistic residency, refers to the history of Gandula Friese’s ancestors. The artist tells the story of her grandmother and mother, who were forced to flee Kyiv during World War II. During the residency, Friese travelled to places where her family evacuated to (first Hel, then Gdańsk).
This journey is not only about the places she visited, but also the people she talked to. Photography here is the tool to tell this story. “This is interesting to me, especially in the context of the fact that first my grandmother and mother could not speak Ukrainian or Russian as it was too dangerous, and later, for similar reasons, they could not speak German. Perhaps the result of this was that, as a child, I could not speak. Maybe this is the aftermath of those events?”, Gandula Friese says. As such, for the first time in her career, she also made a video, in which she used her own voice.
Reportorial shots and iconic photos
Essence of a moment – Barbara Klemm
The festival audience will have the opportunity to take a closer look at the works of German photographer Barbara Klemm, who has focused her lens on political and social issues since the 1960s. As the photographer of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (a newspaper for which she worked for 45 years), she documented the contemporary history of Germany with exceptional shots, often taken quickly in a manner that documentary filmmakers use to avoid staging. Klemm has the ability to see that one singular moment that says more than a whole photo series – the pure essence of the moment, captured without pompousness and with visible respect.
East Berlin, October 7, 1979 – Barbara Klemm captures an image that goes down in history. The so-called “fraternal kiss” depicts Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany, and Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, kissing on the lips during the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic. At the time, it caused a stir among the international press. Today, it is regarded as an icon of photojournalism.
Barbara Klemm’s exhibition Chiaroscuro at the State Art Gallery in Sopot will feature over 150 photographs taken between 1968 and 2008, depicting East and West Germany and the country after reunification in 1990. Among the exhibited photographs, the audience will find reportorial shots of political, social, and cultural events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as portraits of famous people from the world of politics and art, including Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Warhol, Stanisław Lem, Madonna, and Lech Wałęsa.
Portraits of flowers
Transformation in nature – Catrin Wechler
Catrin Wechler, a Berlin-based artist, focuses her attention on the seemingly small events in daily life. Ordinariness is taken out of context, and therefore, fragments of daily life are given new meanings. In this way, she demonstrates the uniqueness of everyday life, which can often be overlooked. The results of Wechler’s unique vision will be on display at Goyki 3 Art Inkubator with the photographic series Pflanzenporträts.
Exceptional plants undergo a constant cycle of blooming, birth, and eventual wilting and dying, and as such, the images depict the cycle of life in nature, corresponding perfectly with the festival’s theme of transformation. Wechler’s works capture this dynamic and invite viewers to look at the world of plants from a unique perspective. The portraits of flowers encourage reflection on one’s own existence and raise the question: “Where do we come from and where are we going?”.
The plants portrayed by Wechler resemble objects of art. In addition, the extraordinary space of Art Inkubator makes their visual appeal even more evident, as Goyki 3 Art Inkubator is located in a villa characteristic of the city of Sopot, built in the Alpine style, with its design referring to castle and Renaissance architecture.
Glimpse of solastalgia in solarstalgia
Melting glaciers – Diana Lelonek
Putting nature in the centre of her creative attention, Diana Lelonek’s photographs depict nature in a way where it not only appears but is also a co-creator. Her works exhibited at the Splot Gallery show then a completely different face of photography.
In 2024, Lelonek was invited to a solo presentation at the Glacier Garden Museum in Lucerne as part of the Watching the Glacier Disappear exhibition series. The subject was not new to her – five years earlier, together with German composer Demin Szram, she created Melting Gallery, an installation made up of sounds recorded on Rhône, Aletsch, and Morteratsch – the melting glaciers.
In Sopot, she takes a closer look at the practice of covering glaciers with plastic tarpaulins to protect them from melting. The audience will have the opportunity to see her works from the Solarstalgia series, which was created on large pieces of textiles. Here, the artist has taken another step in her observation of the glacier. However, the result differs drastically from the previous ones – with the textiles, it weighs down and pollutes the glacier and water with microplastics.
Also, to create Solarstalgia, Lelonek used techniques such as solarigraphy, cyanotype, and anthotype. The solarigraphs were reproduced using the cyanotype technique, while the artist used a camera obscura, allowing the sun to burn its own path above the mountain peaks.
Absent colours
Colour in the spotlight – Tomek Albin
Right next to the Sopot train station, at the Sopot Centrum, three exhibitions will be waiting for the audience. Including Tomek Albin’s experiment-based Colores Absentes. While the artist shows his fascination with light, colour, and texture, the origin of the series lies in night-time shots of urban spaces. For years, Albin has been taking a series of nocturnal photographs entitled Insomnia, showing the cityscape marked by human presence.
This time, the artist moves inside, using a photography studio to make compositions from construction waste and recycled materials. These objects, placed in a new context, juxtaposed with each other and modified, draw the viewer’s attention to colour, which becomes the protagonist. In Albin’s world, nothing is unambiguous; through his experiment, he poses a question of whether there is only one vision of what we see. A different perspective reveals previously undiscovered potential.
Agriculture and environment
An infra-red landscape – Michał Adamski
The Splot Gallery will also present Michał Adamski’s new project, As The Water Covers The Land. Primarily interested in the agricultural landscape entangled in a dialogue between the past and the present, Adamski presents the contemporary image of a farm that is significantly different from that of the more nature-friendly past. Observing how a modern farm, dependent on the state of nature, functions, he points to the dualism of agriculture, which, on one hand, contributes to changes in climate, and on the other, remains dependent on it.
Through his project, the artist forces us to ask whether agricultural production that offsets its negative impact on the environment is even possible today. The artist captures landscapes in infrared – it determines colour transformations, as a result of which green is seen as red. The colour is alarming, illustrating the irreversible changes.
REAL WORLD
Alternative reality – Konrad Bryczek
Meanwhile, the colourful side of transformation will be presented at Pracownia Qrort, where Konrad Bryczek, an artist working in documentary photography, will focus the audience’s attention on a world created to last only for a specified time. Such spaces of alternative reality include conventions for fans of fantasy, science fiction, manga, and anime. The photographer will show how not only the participants of these events undergo a huge transformation, but also the places where the events are organised.
FFWRS – W Ramach Sopotu / Frames of Sopot Festival of Photography
September 5–21, 2025
Sopot, Poland
