Wojciech Plewiński donated one of his most famous photographs to the 32nd Finale of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity!
AUCTION LINK: https://allegro.pl/oferta/plewinski-polanski-odbitka-sygnowana-15088495626
The photograph was taken during the legendary Jazz Camping Kalatówki in 1959, which brought together some of Poland’s finest jazz musicians, as well as representatives of the world of culture. It shows director Roman Polański (then a student at the Łódź Film School) and jazzman Andrzej ‘Idon’ Wojciechowski at a pyjama party. In Wojciech Plewiński’s recollections, Jazz Camping at Kalatówki was both a musical and a social event, and its overriding idea was one of complete relaxation. Each concert seamlessly turned into a game, each game into a concert. Polanski was the ringleader of many of the games.
The photograph perfectly illustrates Plewinski’s attitude. As was his custom, he did not concentrate only on the documentation of concerts commissioned by the weekly magazine ‘Przekrój’, but carefully observed everything around him, the party and its participants. The artist comments on this with the sentence that he ‘always did more than was necessary’. But it was often these ‘unnecessary’ photographs, like the one with Polanski dancing, that became icons of Polish photography.
The work opens the exhibition Posed, Candid. Wojciech Plewinski’ Photographs open until the 18th of February 2024 at the History Meeting House in Warsaw. Curators of the exhibition are Anna Brzezińska and Katarzyna Sagatowska.
Technical description:
Title: Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wojciechowski, from the series ‘Jazz Camping Kalatówki’
Dates: 1959/2020
Technique: archival pigment print
Edition: 8/20
Format: 32 x 23 (37 x 27) cm
Signed, dated and stamped by the artist on the reverse
The photograph will be framed in a wooden frame.
Wojciech Plewiński was born in 1928. He is an architect by education, a diver and skier by avocation, and a photographer by profession. As an architecture student, he worked at the Krakow Monument Conservation Workshop and it was then that he started taking photographs. He used the camera to take notes in the form of photographs. A passion was slowly born, partly inherited from his father – there was always a camera and photo albums at home. Eventually, the passion became a profession, although, as the author emphasises, “I am only one fifth of a photographer. Sports, passions were always more important. Diving equipment, a good mask and snorkel have always been more important than a decent camera”.
He is one of the most important representatives of the post-war generation of photographers, whose work corresponds with that of the French humanist photographers of the 1950s – Henri Cartier-Bresson or Elliot Erwitt. His oeuvre includes photographs that belong to the canon of Polish visual culture. His works have been presented at many collective and individual exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, France, Mexico and Hong Kong. In 2011, the National Museum in Krakow prepared a retrospective exhibition to celebrate 50 years of his creative work. Currently, Plewiński’s photographs can be found in the archives of the Museum of Art in Łódź, the National Museum in Wrocław, the Centre for Polish Scenography in Katowice, the National Old Theatre Museum in Krakow or the Museum of Photography in Krakow (MuFo), among others.
The exhibition at the History Meeting House is accompanied by an album of photographs by Wojciech Plewiński with texts by Aleksandra Boćkowska and Anna Brzezińska and Katarzyna Sagatowska.
Curators: Anna Brzezińska, Katarzyna Sagatowska
Project coordination and exhibition production: Julia Libera
Exhibition design: Centrala (Małgorzata Kuciewicz, Simone De Iacobis)
Graphic design: Noviki (Katarzyna Nestorowicz, Marcin Nowicki, Konstanty Konopiński)
Editors: Małgorzata Purzyńska
Editorial collaboration: Magdalena Stefańczyk
Translation: Krzysztof Ścibiorski
Proofreading: Magda Szymańska (Polish), Christopher Smith (English)
Pre-press: Tomasz Kubaczyk
Production: Willow Service Mateusz Wierzbicki
Photo printing: Zbyszek Kordys PrintShop1923
Exhibition partner: ‘Przekrój’
Collection in the History Meeting House or delivery by courier
Wojciech Plewiński, Roman Polański and Andrzej Wojciechowski, from the ‘Jazz Camping Kalatówki’ series, 1959/2020