The 15th anniversary festival once again poses questions on the place of photography in the contemporary world.
Photography “is always on the outside looking in”: Gordon MacDonald, curator of the Main Programme of Krakow Photomonth Festival 2017 (19 May – 18 June 2017), uses the idea of photographers as observer-scholars equipped with technology allowing them to capture reality as the foundation for this year’s event. The result is a question about the relationship between reality and its depiction in photography. The six exhibitions prepared by MacDonald tread a fine line between fact and fiction, leaving the final interpretation of images to the viewers. The festival poster, inviting the audience to “LOOK IN” at materials from the collection of the UFO investigator Wendelle Stevens and the archives of the UFO Investigation Society in Warsaw “UFO-Video”, surrender themselves to artistic manipulations on the subject of war and its depiction in the media, admire moments of dance expression frozen in photos, analyse idyllic snapshots of life in rural America, and ponder the complex history of the former Liban quarry and the Plaszow concentration camp, bearing the scars of the Second World War. “With the series of exhibitions that make up From the Outside, Looking In, I have taken the position that everything and nothing is true, and that all photographic modes have the potential to be simultaneously valid as both fabrications and hard evidence,” says MacDonald. The Main Programme also features exhibitions by special guests, exploring themes corresponding to the main festival motifs present in contemporary Polish photography.
The ShowOFF Section presents projects by eight artists selected through a competition, focusing around the sense of uncertainty, ubiquitous in today’s turbulent world. The authors give their takes on the subject of change – border crossings, losing continuity, and an absence of reliable reference points both in the political and general existential sense.
Although the festival has been running since mid-May, there are still plenty of accompanying events ahead, including the exhibition of works by the winner of the last year’s Portfolio Review Wiktor Dąbkowski exploring the truths and myths around the nightlife of Poland’s spa resorts, as well as meetings, book launches and workshops. And to finish? A bicycle Tour de Festival and a picnic! Last but not least, Małopolska continues to host a great celebration of photography focusing around the Krakow Photo Fringe festival running in parallel with the Photomonth Festival.
Let us LOOK IN! (Dorota Dziunikowska, “Karnet” monthly)
