This autumn, from September 12th to October 13th, the 10th edition of Vintage Photo Festival will take place in Bydgoszcz. This event is a platform for exchanging thoughts, trends, and knowledge between analogue photography enthusiasts. This year’s motto is “HERITAGE,” meaning the legacy of traditional photography techniques.
The director of the festival Katarzyna Gębarowska emphasises the role of female artists in the development of the medium. That is why they schowcase female artists who use analogue photography in their work. The festival explores the contemporary perception of analogue photography as well as photographic archives, focusing particularly on the archives of female artists after 1945.
During this year’s edition, the public will have the opportunity to see the works of many remarkable female artists. The creative output of each of them represents an individual approach to working with the medium of photography. Among the artists presented in Bydgoszcz are Jagoda Przybylak, Natalia LL, Teresa Gierzyńska, Zofia Kulik, Iwona Germanek, Katarzyna Kryńska, and Magdalena Wosińska. Each of them engaged in a creative dialogue with the medium during their explorations related to its form, its creative aspect, or the dominant emotions. They all managed to create a distinctive language that can serve as an inspiration.
PIONEERS
JAGODA PRZYBYLAK
“It is not enough to see, one must look.” – Jagoda Przybylak
Exploring the limits of photography’s documentational potential.
Photography festivals provide an opportunity to discover and popularise artists who are often forgotten by the public. The same is true for the Vintage Photo Festival. This year, Jagoda Przybylak’s works will be exhibited for the first time. Thanks to the collaboration with the ARTON Foundation and Jagoda Przybylak Foundation, the unjustly marginalised works of Przybylak will finally be shown to the public. As an artist, Jagoda Przybylak was ahead of her time as she created photographic installations whose form resembled that of Instagram (a grid made of squares).
Contemporary researchers refer to Jagoda Przybylak (1929 – 2023) as the pioneer of conceptual photography. However, before photography, she studied architecture. Gradually, her creative explorations shifted towards this medium. Her encounter with Zbigniew Dłubak (1921 – 2005), an art theorist, painter, and photographer admired by Przybylak, became a critical moment for her creative path. She was particularly fascinated by Dłubak’s analytical photographs. Her efforts in photography concentrated on reportage and did not foreshadow the experimental character of her future works. From 1977 on she redirected her creative energy towards the analysis of existing photographic material. Her large-format collages and photographic installations consisted of enlargements made from re-photographed vernacular photos from which she then extracted individual people. She attempted to reverse the process of oblivion and noticed seemingly insignificant details that revealed more about the person captured in the photograph.
Her early work “Hundred times a net” was created as a response to a task given to her by Zbigniew Dłubak and consisted of a series of close-ups of various elements of a fishing net. Encouraged to experiment, Przybylak continued on her way toward conceptualism. The artist’s deeply humanistic approach related to the interrelation of images was paradoxically fulfilled in such an analytical and systematic method.
In the late 1970s, Przybylak moved to the United States and settled in New York. Her Conceptual Photography Studio based on Piwna Street in Warsaw has been operating since 1980 and was run by Janusz Bąkowski during her absence. Currently, it is looked after by artist Jerzy Dobrzański. The studio was incorporated into Warsaw Historic Art Studios (and was visited by the editors of Contemporary Lynx).
Long time un/seen
To mark the tenth anniversary of the International Analogue Photography Lovers Festival, Vintage Photo Festival, the Bydgoszcz District Museum will prepare an exhibition based on an art photography collection. The exhibition, titled Long time un/seen, is the collection’s second installment. The exhibition will feature works by Natalia LL, Teresa Gierzyńska, and Zofia Kulik.
NATALIA LL
Visualisation of an artistic idea
Natalia LL (1937 – 2022), who is considered one of the most important figures of Polish conceptualism and Neo-avantgarde, used photography, drawing, performance art, and video in her works. She gained greater recognition thanks to her photographic works from the 1960s and 1970s – particularly her “Consumer Art” (1972) series. These photographs depicted young women eating. Part of the audience noticed a certain eroticism in the way the women consumed food. This representation of such an ordinary act became subject to many interpretations, such as a criticism of the People’s Republic of Poland or of the male gaze. After all, Natalia LL was an icon of feminist art. She included intimate and private elements in her works.
In the 1970s, during the formation of conceptual art, photography served as a way to renew the language of art and visualise the thought processes. It was then that, together with Andrzej Lachowicz, Zbigniew Dłubak and Antoni Dzieduszycki, Natalia LL established the PERMAFO art gallery, which led to a popularisation of Neo-avantgarde trends in Polish art. Photography was then rediscovered as a medium susceptible to manipulation and useful for interpreting reality.
The activities undertaken within this group pursued a program of permanent photography, which was to record a given object following the concept adapted, without any aestheticisation or creation.
As the years passed, Natalia LL focused on criticising the representation of women in contemporary culture. She pursued this idea in her self-portraits, one of which will be on display at the festival exhibition in Bydgoszcz.
TERESA GIERZYŃSKA
Female gaze – liberation from the “male gaze”
The art of Teresa Gierzyńska (born in 1947), sculptor, photographer, and graphic artist, is still being discovered. Recently, she has been talked about more often, as her art has been placed in the broader context of the history of Polish photography. Unfortunately, for a long time, her photography remained misunderstood by the wider public.
Photography has been present in Gierzyńska’s life from a very young age. However, she only started to use it artistically in the 1960s and the 1970s, when she started photographing the female body liberated from the male gaze. The search for female representation was also a way to go beyond the role imposed on a woman by society. Today it could be referred to as the “female gaze.” The series devoted to femininity is still developed by Gierzyńska to this day. The artist photographed herself and later also her growing daughter Pola Dwurnik. The photographs taken in the space of a small flat are as candid as possible. The subtle and intimate language developed by Gierzyńska allows a close look at femininity.
ZOFIA KULIK
Return to tradition – decorative, yet critical
Zofia Kulik’s (born in 1947) works are among those exhibited at the festival. Zofia represented Poland at the 47th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – in 1997. She does not limit herself to one medium, expressing her artistic vision in collages, photographs, installations, sculptures, as well as performances.
From 1970 to 1987 she was a part of the KwieKulik duo with Przemysław Kwiek which presented one of the first performance art acts in Poland.
Zofia Kulik made her mark in the history of photography due to her visually appealing and meticulously designed large-format photographic collages. Starting in late 1980s she began to work solo, focusing on collages consisting of previously arranged photographs. The artist played with form and used well-known patterns and traditions. Her works resemble stained glass, mandalas, mosaics, and oriental carpets. The form itself was borrowed, but the content was created through the artist’s photographs. For several years, Kulik collaborated with Zbigniew Libera who became her model and was photographed while performing various gestures. The artist studied and photographed the gestures depriving the model of any individuality. The aspect of decorativeness visible in these works contrasted the motifs in the photographs. Zofia Kulik’s collages refer primarily to the issue of power and the system’s dominance over the individual. When seen from afar, the view is simply beautiful, but upon closer inspection, the viewer will notice certain iconographic motifs that cause anxiety.
CONTEMPORARY FACES OF ANALOGUE PHOTOGRAPHY
KATARZYNA KRYŃSKA
Unique image – photographic poetry
Vintage Photo Festival in Bydgoszcz is a celebration of photography’s past, which is why one of the exhibited artists is Katarzyna Kryńska (born in 1972). Kryńska uses nineteenth-century techniques, such as wet collodion or cyanotype. She is an architect, designer, photographer, and a Doctor of Fine Arts who specialises in portrait photography. The artist herself uses the term “emotional photography,” emphasising the therapeutic role of art. She believes in the importance of the creative process, as it allows for self-reflection, a deeper look inside, and finding yourself between the material and the spiritual.
In her photographs, Kryńska deliberately leaves room for chance and imperfection, as errors can provide an opportunity for new interpretations.
During this year’s edition of the festival, she will present her project “Lympha,” created using cyanotype. In the project, she refers to the Jungian concept of human development and finding balance by combining opposites. Her grandfather’s stamp collection inspired these reflections illustrating the male dominance in the social system. The images captured on these stamps hid an encoded disparity. The established stereotypes were becoming the dominant way of thinking which “poisoned” the soul and body. In opposition to this is the female element, referred to by Kryńska as “lymph”.
According to the insightful Jungian Marion Woodman “the feminine side of our existence lives with a slower rhythm, is less rational. It moves with more spontaneity, is more open, accepts life as it is, without judgement.”
By deconstructing and redefining the value system, the artist seeks an opportunity for a world of diversity and possibility, rather than uniformity and necessity.
IWONA GERMANEK
Unique connections between images – restoring memory
Iwona Germanek also uses old photographic techniques as a means of expression. She is open to experiments and creates both analogue and digital collages. She also makes assemblages using Japanese washi paper, wax, and other materials. She explores themes such as family, memory, depression or abstraction. She is inspired by old photo albums, family albums, and long-forgotten anonymous photographs. Most importantly, Germanek emphasises the importance of staying in touch with the past and of passing on memory. She creates unique connections between photographs which are a record of intergenerational contact and restores life to archival visual materials.
She is the author of two artistic books: “Zielnik” (“Herbarium”) published in 2021 and “Różowy nie istnieje” (“Pink Doesn’t Exist”) published in 2023. During the festival, the public will have a chance to see works from the series “Zapach” (“Scent”), in which, the artist returns to Halemba, her hometown. Germanek refers to the created images as “maps of forgetfulness”. She raises the issue of the role of memories in constructing one’s identity and asks what happens when a person loses access to their memories referring to her mother’s dementia.
MAGDALENA WOSINSKA
Dominance of spontaneity – snapshot photography
Photography as a tool for the outsider
The abundant spontaneity of contemporary analogue photography will be introduced to the Bydgoszcz audience by Magdalena Wosinska, a Polish-born artist and one of the most acclaimed photographers in the US. After she and her family moved to the States in the 1990s, she was forced to find herself in American culture. Wosinska found her place within the skateboarding subculture. She took up photography at 14, and later became successful in artistic, editorial, and commercial photography. She has worked with celebrities such as George Clooney and Joaquin Phoenix. Along with her commercial work, she also pursues very personal projects.
Her photography is full of authenticity, strong emotions, and rebellion. The frames are filled with a sense of freedom and an outlaw attitude.
In her project “Fulfill the Dream”, Wosinska returns to her roots in skateboarding culture. The photographs provide a glimpse into her artistic journey. That is why among the selected photos there are also those taken when she was 14. Her early photographs are not only a remarkable record of the subculture, but they also show the perspective of a girl fascinated by it. The photographs are filled with youthful energy and the spirit of rebellion. In the 1990s skateboarding was seen as a form of youthful rebellion. Such intimate images are not only a record of Wosinska’s artistic growth, but even more importantly, of her struggle to belong and to rebuild her identity.
Translated by Beata Ekert
