Opening: 22.06.2023 (Thursday), 6pm
Exhibition: 23.06.2023–4.02.2024 // EXTENDED UNTIL 18.02.2024
Curatorial guided tour: 24.06.2023 (Saturday), 1pm
Place: History Meeting House, Karowa 20, 00-324 Warsaw, Poland
Curators: Anna Brzezińska, Katarzyna Sagatowska
Posed, Candid. Wojciech Plewiński’s photographs will present around 150 photographs chosen from the artist’s impressive artistic oeuvre. While he spent decades working at Kraków’s ‘Przekrój’ magazine and with some of the most important theaters in Poland, his photography wasn’t limited to commissioned assignments. He traveled, camera in hand, around Poland and Europe, and photographed his friends and acquaintances, many of whom were leading figures in Poland’s cultural and artistic life. Some of those photos were ‘for work’, while others came about as spontaneous results of his ability to observe. He often says that he ‘did more than was required’
Photographs presented at the exhibition were mostly taken between 1950–1980. The works were selected from the artist’s impressive archive by the curators Anna Brzezińska and Katarzyna Sagatowska, who emphasize: ‘The photographer’s artistic output escapes simple categorization. It’s characterized by lightness, sense of humour and egalitarian treatment of every moment interesting enough. The topical focus falls mostly into everything that’s human.
He always traveled with a camera, ever ready to press the shutter release. He took his first photographs more than 70 years ago with a borrowed Leica. Since then, he has shot more than 500 Przekrój weekly covers, photographed more than 800 theater performances, and collected thousands of photographs in his personal archive. But what we find most important in Plewiński’s approach cannot be quantified. The documentary photographs we have selected for the Posed, Candid exhibition reflect Plewiński’s approach to his work as an alert, sensitive, and formalistically disciplined observer of people. His contact sheets demonstrate impressively precise framing and patience. Curators have decided to present the variety of his work, arranging them by themes: People, Fashion and design, ‘Przekrój’, Foreign travels, A story about Poland, Theatre.
‘The documentary photographs we have selected for the Posed, Candid exhibition reflect Plewiński’s approach to his work as an alert, sensitive, and formalistically disciplined observer of people’ – write the curators. ‘As he entered the profession in the second half of the 1950s, Plewiński sketched a moving portrait of post-war Poland: the ruined Western Territories returning to life and the disappearingtraces of the past of the Sklepiki [Small Stores] series. He also photographed the emerging workers’ and peasants’ communist Poland in the Nowa Huta series and in commissioned reportages from the Radoskór shoe factory and the Huta Katowice steel mill. The SAM-y series shows how Poles in the 1950s attempted to make their dreams of owning a car a reality. Portraits of artists and intellectuals, as well as theatre photography, make up much of the exhibition. Plewiński worked with some of the most important Polish playhouses, using a traditional camera (with negatives and no flash) to preserve the performances’ atmosphere and the plasticity of the image’.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring Plewiński’s photographs and texts by Aleksandra Boćkowska, Anna Brzezińska and Katarzyna Sagatowska.
Exhibition coordinated and produced by: Julia Libera
Exhibition project: Centrala (Małgorzata Kuciewicz, Simone De Iacobis)
Graphic design: Noviki (Katarzyna Nestorowicz, Marcin Nowicki, Konstanty Konopiński)
Editing: Małgorzata Purzyńska
Editing assistance: Magdalena Stefańczyk
Translation: Krzysztof Ścibiorski
Proofreading: Magda Szymańska (Polish), Christopher Smith (English)
Photo prints: Tomasz Kubaczyk
Implementation of the exhibition project: Willow Service Mateusz Wierzbicki
Print: Zbyszek Kordys PrintShop1923
Partner: ‘Przekrój’
Header photo: Wojciech Plewiński, Barbara Gronuś-Sokalska. Funfair, Kraków, 1960. Colored black and white print, ‘Przekrój’, no. 791, June 5th 1960