“Internationally, there’s an increasing number of initiatives to exhibit photographs that have been marginalised until now — especially in their local contexts — to revise the prevailing canons”, says curator Katarzyna Gębarowska. From the first such extensive retrospective of Marie-Laure de Decker at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, to the exhibition More Light, More Shadow: Rogi André (1900-1970) at the Mai Manó Ház in Budapest, rediscovering the work of a little-known artist from interwar Paris. To Toruń – where the exhibition Unseen Legacies, curated by Gębarowska, juxtaposes the works of Lotte Jacobi and Janina Gardzielewska, thus proposing “a new context for their presence in the history of photography, revealing the mechanisms of overlooking and the inner workings of local artistic memory”.
Although their biographies and artistic paths hardly intersected, their work forms a fascinating dialogue about memory, locality, and art, which history has not always sought to preserve. They were separated by a generation, geography, and historical context, but united by the experience of marginalisation. Moreover, Toruń was a place that somehow connected both. It is therefore no surprise that this city hosts such an exemplary exhibition – a dialogue between two biographies and two photographic languages, and an attempt to restore their presence in art history.
In October, Toruń becomes the venue for an extraordinary meeting. As part of the Vintage Photo Festival at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, an exhibition entitled Unseen Legacies will be presented, reviving the memory of two artists: Lotte Jacobi and Janina Gardzielewska.
Two perspectives
Lotte Jacobi (1896–1990) was born here, but left with her family when she was just two years old. She returned to the city only once – in 1962, during a trip across Europe. Walking around the Old Town with her camera, she photographed places associated with her family, such as the former studio at Podmurna Street and Kopernika and Świętego Ducha Streets. “Two 12-frame rolls of film documenting her walk around the city have been preserved, including an almost identical shot of the Market Square with the Copernicus monument, which her grandfather had once immortalised”, says the exhibition curator. As such, only a few of Jacobi’s photographs from this trip are shown at the exhibition – “snapshots” of the city taken by a tourist as a souvenir.
It is in the works of Janina Gardzielewska (1926–2012) that the city emerges as the main theme – a source of inspiration, a field of experimentation, a space for intimate dialogue. She arrived in Toruń in 1936 and lived there for the rest of her life. For her, it was a constant source of inspiration. Fascination with Gothic architecture – austere, simple, ascetic, devoid of unnecessary ornamentation, as well as Copernicus and local history made her work a dialogue with tradition, yet always seen through the filter of personal sensitivity. “Toruń is my beloved city and I try to present it as I see it, according to my feelings”, she emphasised. In Gardzielewska’s photographs and collages, the city gained its own rhythm, becoming a protagonist equal to the people she also immortalised, among other things, when working as a theatre photographer.
The exhibition presents Lotte Jacobi’s photographs for the first time in Poland. Her main area of interest was portraiture, so it was quite remarkable to find photographs of Toruń that were not taken by her as works “for the public”. Here, even if through only a few photographs, Toruń also gains a new narrative in which women’s art takes its rightful place.
” Here, even if through only a few photographs, Toruń also gains a new narrative in which women’s art takes its rightful place.”
A meeting place
They were also united by their courage to experiment with form. Jacobi, who was first active in the Berlin circles of New Objectivity and expressionist cinema, began to create abstract works on photosensitive paper after emigrating to the United States, moving away from pure documentation. She went on to create experimental photographic works. “Jacobi titled the series created between 1946 and 1955 Photogenic Drawing, treating each photograph as a drawing with a camera”, notes Gębarowska. These works, formally close to abstract painting, show that the boundary between photography and other visual arts practically disappeared in her case. These abstract images of light and shadow can be compared to the explorations of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy or the experiments of the Surrealists, who treated photography as a medium of creation rather than just a record.
Gardzielewska grew up in a different reality – post-war Poland, where the term “fotografika” (a neologism created by Jan Bułhak) signified aspirations for photography to be an art form equal to painting or graphic art. Her large-format photo collages, rhythmic and full of formal contrasts, are part of the neo-avant-garde tradition of the 1960s and 1970s – alongside Zofia Rydet and Edward Hartwig. They reveal an internal struggle – a love of truth and simplicity clashes with the need for creation. Gardzielewska, like many artists of this movement, sought her own language.
Both women were active at a time when photography underwent enormous changes. Throughout the 20th century, the medium radically changed its meaning — from document to art, from recording reality to transforming it into an image that has something to say in its own right. Both artists, at different times and in slightly different ways, exploited the possibilities of photography.
Locality and globality
Unseen Legacies is also a reminder that the history of photography is constantly being rewritten. Katarzyna Gębarowska emphasises that she finds particularly fascinating those aspects that are still unrecognised, unobvious combinations that can be a source of inspiration. The biographies of Jacobi and Gardzielewska bring together two worlds – the global and the local. Jacobi represented the international scene, while Gardzielewska represented a specific city with which she linked her life and art.
This juxtaposition allows us to examine the relationship between the centre and the periphery. The exhibition can be seen as a dialogue between realities – local and global. Two photographers represent two perspectives here. “In this way, the exhibition serves not only to reconstruct lost threads, but also to creatively reinterpret them – placing both artists in a dialogue that transcends the boundaries of local and national photographic histories”, Gębarowska emphasises.
The exhibition creates a space in which the local is not marginalised and the international is not detached. The meeting of these two perspectives is like a juxtaposition of macro- and micro-narratives, grand contexts and minor events. It is a reminder that the history of photography is not only made up of the works of great artists, but also of fragments that someone had to preserve, of images that someone had to save.
“The exhibition serves not only to reconstruct lost threads, but also to creatively reinterpret them – placing both artists in a dialogue that transcends the boundaries of local and national photographic histories”
Presence and memory
Ultimately, Unseen Legacies raises questions about how art history is created. Who decides which names to include and which to omit? What role do archives play, where unknown materials still await discovery? In this sense, Jacobi and Gardzielewska become symbolic figures — not only photographers, but also victims of cultural memory selection. As the curator emphasises: “During their lifetimes, both achieved recognition, and despite their accomplishments, each experienced exclusion”.
Jacobi’s photographs will be shown in Poland for the first time, even though her family had ties to Toruń for many years. During her lifetime, Gardzielewska won numerous awards and honours, but after her death, her name has been virtually absent from the history of photography. “The exhibition restores Gardzielewska to her rightful place in the photographic canon and symbolically brings Jacobi back to her hometown”, notes Gębarowska, adding that “it is still possible to find forgotten things in the archives and rediscover what seems familiar”.
Unseen legacies. Rediscovering Lotte Jacobi and Janina Gardzielewska
on display as part of the Vintage Photo Festival
October 10 – November 16, 2025
curated by dr Katarzyna Gębarowska
Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu”, Toruń, Poland
The article was written based on curatorial material by Katarzyna Gębarowska.
