| | | | |
Stefania Gurdowa - Negatives are to be Stored
Red Barn Gallery
May 1 - 29
Opens Mon - Sat 10.00am –5.00pm | | | | | | | | | | | Eleven years ago, at the attic of a tenement-house in the town of Debica, over a thousand of damaged glass negative plates were discovered. Most of them depicted expressive portraits of anonymous individuals living in the neighbourhood in the 20’s and 30’s.
The provenance of these photographs was unusual: an independent, consequent, gifted woman whose workshop remained far away from grand cultural capitols and who performed her art while taking ordered portraits of her neighbours: shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants, priests and Jews. Gurdowa, the distinguished artist, died in 1968. The flat was cleaned after she had passed. The immense photographic archive was disposed and wasted. Only a fraction of her art lasted, together with a question without an answer: who hid a collection of glass plates behind a wall in the attic of her workshop in Debica?
Perhaps was it her own decision to preserve them this way. As a responsible professional she must have obviously been aware of the rule that “negatives are to be stored”.
www.polishculturalweek.com | | | | | | | | | | | |
