With everything else going on this year, we almost missed the fact that the Krakow Photomonth – usually held in May – didn’t happen. Has it disappeared for good?
By Grzegorz Słącz
“On the contrary!” says Tomasz Gutkowski, main organiser of the event. “We’re changing the formula, working with new collaborators, striding ahead. The Photomonth brand is important and widely recognised, and we want to share it with other organisers of cultural life in Kraków. And it’s already happening, as we are working alongside the city and its cultural institutions.”
The changing realities of cultural Kraków convinced the organisers of Photomonth – the city’s flagship event in the field of photography – to reflect on the future of this renowned festival with a twenty-year long history. The previous formula of a major annual festival held in a short space of time, mainly in May, was becoming increasingly difficult to organise. From now on, the traditional festival will be held every other year (on even-numbered years), with conceptual works and activities held under the Photomonth banner every year throughout the months. This concept has been launched this year; the most direct impulse was the invitation extended to the organisers by the Kraków Municipal Office to co-develop an ongoing cultural calendar.
Photomonth events mainly form a part of the programme of the Potocki Palace, including exhibitions, artistic campaigns and permanent cycles of events adding themes of visual arts and photography to KBF’s (Krakow Festival Office) literary programme. The educational programme “School of Seeing” promises to be interesting. The organisers start with the assumption that truly seeing – something we are never taught – is key to understanding reality, since images are hardly innocent: we use them to communicate, and they frequently decide upon important matters. Images influence our decisions, both the trivial such as choosing which brand to buy in a shop and the important such as who to vote for.
Another important reason for hosting meetings at the Potocki Palace is the broadly-defined phenomenon of photo albums; it is the belief that such publications form a very different way of interacting with images than exhibitions. “Exhibitions can be viewed clockwise or anticlockwise, you can start at the beginning or the middle. With an album, you are taken by the hand and the way the story is laid out is important – but we must have the skills essential to truly ‘reading’ and understanding images,” explains Gutkowski. These skills will be honed through a cycle curated by Rafał Siderski.
In November, the Potocki Palace presents an exhibition organised by (and under the banner of) Photomonth in collaboration with Bunkier Sztuki. It is the result of a long process recalling the exhibition (un)Welcome presented as part of the Krakow Photomonth in 2022 alongside the Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition, academic conference and book WELCOME by the MNRT collective were inspired by the growing immigration crisis, especially events on the Polish-Belarusian border. Additionally, Russia’s brutal invasion on Ukraine means that we are confronted with a war just beyond our border. Natalia Wiernik, curator of the exhibition (un)Welcome, decided that we must remain sensitive to these events rather than accepting them as part of our reality. This was the basis for this year’s exhibition How Are You? The co-curator of the exhibition is Kholoud Charaf, the Syrian poet and activist forced by persecution to flee her country.
On one hand, the exhibition shows our helplessness in the face of the cruelty of war – after all, taking photos of armed conflict never brings relief – while on the other it uses sparse means to carry a powerful emotional charge. There are no photos of refugees or apocalyptic visions of bombarded city ruins. Instead, the works take a different approach: they show walls scarred by bullets (Dima Tolkachov) and reveal efforts by the Livyj Bereh (Left Bank) artistic collective who are using their creative energy to repair roofs and walls of damaged buildings.
In 2024 we will experience Photomonth in its full format, although a little later than usual – starting in the second half of June. Discussions are ongoing with Kraków’s cultural institutions which are interested in co-organising events under the common, acclaimed banner. The organisers aim to turn summertime in Kraków into a time of photography – a time when locals and visitors can immerse themselves deeply in this art.
The main exhibition of Photomonth in 2024 will be dedicated to today’s Africa – a continent which many believe will play a key role in how the world develops in the coming decades. There will also be six exhibitions held as part of the ShowOFF section following a major international competition. The Fringe Section will serve as a platform promoting collaboration between art schools throughout Poland.
Photomonth and its organisers the Visual Arts Foundation are not limiting themselves to Kraków: this year they are launching a major exhibition of works by Zygmunt Rytka in Warsaw. They are also finalising the monumental achievement of completing the archive of works by Władysław Hasior following a three-year-long project with the Tatra Museum in Zakopane.
Photo: preparing of the How Are You? exhibition, curator Natalia Wiernik / Edyta Dufaj
The article published in the 4/2023 issue of “Kraków Culture” quarterly.
