The Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola decided to honour the memory of local heroes, fighting and dying for their homeland, by organising an open-air exhibition on the Rozwadów Market Square, telling the story of years ago. The exhibition is, in a sense, unprecedented. In order to create an interesting narrative capable of capturing the interest of different audiences, the Museum has, for the first time, resorted to state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI). The 19 panels present generated unique images that make the bleak times of the Second World War more appealing to the viewer. Bogdan Dziworski’s photographs belong to the canon of Polish post-war photography. These black and white shots depict moments from the lives of ordinary people: young and old, pretty and ugly, at work or relaxing. They are set in Polish cities and towns, although from time to time the author also immortalised scenes from foreign cities. With a peculiar distance and a sense of humour, he brings back memories of everyday life in decades gone by. His photographs – seemingly classic in form and content – are often surprising in their innovativeness and reflexivity, not to mention the technique of Dziworski – one of the most important creators of Polish documentary film of the second half of the 20th century.
These photographs will be a revelation – many of them are being published for the first time. Black and white, taken with Leica, with a 50 mm lens. Most often with an aperture of 5.6 (hence the title of the album).
People in the street, in the courtyards of tenement houses, in the park, in the funfair. Expressive faces, facial expressions, gestures. A game between people, reminiscent of dance, with something of a love ritual, also something of a circus. A surprising world. The choice of images itself is also surprising – we move from the Poniatowski Park in Łódź to Central Park in New York.
At first it seems that these black and white, generic scenes of streets and backyards are a reportage from some distant civilisation. But while these photographs are full of moral detail, they are not dominated by a sociologist’s gaze. They are not about Poland. This is neither another judgement on the People’s Republic of Poland, nor a nostalgic return to the days of youth. The tension here stems from the photographer’s relationship with reality. Regardless of when and where these photographs were taken, each is a whole world laid bare before us, captured in a unique moment.
– My photographs from that era are never staged,’ says Dziworski, ’They are outgoing. Day after day, there were times, eight hours of shooting. Zbyszek Rybczyński used to say: wherever I go, something interesting happens. It was the same with me. At first, nothing happens. Then, only if you have the patience, the dance with reality begins. Seemingly everything is over, a normal person says ‘goodbye’, and that’s when you have to take pictures! And then comes that one moment – the Bressonian ‘was-gone’. After long training sessions, you can get ahead of it by fractions of a second. Photographing is waiting for that one moment when reality sets in on its own. For that you need luck. And I have it. I’m observing two sets, timing them together. Three – it’s incredible luck that comes into your frame. A director could set it up for himself – I anticipate.
Excerpts from Tadeusz Sobolewski’s essay ‘The Dance of Reality’, included in the album ‘f/5.6’
About the artist:
Bogdan Dziworski was born in Łódź in 1941. In 1965 he graduated from the Department of Cinematography at the National Film School in Łódź. He was awarded the title of doctor in 1994 and full professor in 2002. Lecturer at the National Film School in Łódź, at the Radio and Television Faculty of the University of Silesia in Katowice and at the Warsaw Film School. He cooperated with the Polish Film Chronicle, the Educational Film Studio in Łódź and the Film Realization Company ‘Film Teams’. He is the author of many documentaries, mainly devoted to sports. Many of them have achieved ‘cult’ status and still have their admirers today.
Dziworski has never treated photography as a profession. And although he never parted with his Leica camera, for him the photographic work was a complement to his profession as a cinematographer, screenwriter and film director. His work with moving images is directly reflected in the photographic record – the aesthetics of his photographs are imbued with the spirit of the Polish film school.
For many years, Dziworski took his photographs ‘to the drawer’ – he did not organise exhibitions or publish them. His first album was already published in the early 1980s in Vienna, but we waited another ten years for the first Polish exhibitions, and twenty years for publication.
Bogdan Dziworski’s photographs belong to the canon of Polish post-war photography. They are black and white shots, classic in form and content of expression. Their author, a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker by profession, is considered a master of street photography and is compared to Henri Cartier-Bresson. The habits he acquired from working with the moving image make him an excellent observer of life and recorder of human behaviour. The photographer frames reality with perfect lightness, and the situations depicted in his pictures have an aura that is difficult to capture. Each of his photographs is a mini-story that constitutes a poetic or amusing anecdote.
Bogdan Dziworski is currently represented by 6×7 Leica Gallery Warsaw – the publisher of the f/5.6 album and co-organiser of the exhibition.viewer’s bravery.
Each scene presented is accompanied by a fragment of text, taken from the account of a participant in these events – Home Army soldier Czesław Kamiński ‘Głaz’, the main occupant of ‘Górka’. This combination, despite being associated with comic book history, maintains a tone appropriate to the subject matter presented, and makes it easier to understand and remember the events of 80 years ago. This is because the characters ‘come to life’, with the audience running after them up the stairs, hearing whispers, screams and gunshots. Thanks to this solution, they somehow become participants in the events depicted.
The images for the exhibition were created using WOMBO DREAM. Due to the use of artificial intelligence, the generated images are not free of imperfections and do not reflect the real details of characters and places, and are only illustrations of historical events.
