MALOPOLSKA. PHOTOGRAPHS. UNCLARYFIED

Some of the photographers lived in the region, others - outside of there, but all their unusual photographs introduce the Malopolska as a contrary, surprising and different from typical association area.

Usually the choice is minimal: turn left or right. Turning to the left symbolises: staying in town, crawling the streets, staring through open windows, at people sluggishly fighting the heat, at sticky tarmac and scorched grass; going left means sitting on cafe terraces, waiting for the heat to die down. Going left means the day will wind its way greengrocers have packed up and given way to drunks and tourists.

Turn to the right, though, and you get a different picture altogether: an almost definite possibility of getting out. Not just anywhere though, but some places a relative stone's throw from town: either a bus or a train, or at least a clapped-out tram to Nowa Huta, even a dodgy minibus to Krzeszowice... A quick pit stop en route, a meadow upon which graze the sheep of a shepherd whose look is almost Greek, old and proud.

Turning to the right means unexpected encounters: a Hungarian Gypsy somewhere in Podhale selling knives on a Sunday. His family would sleep in a van opposite; he would mutter something in his tongue before slurring: "sto, one hundred". The meadows would be glum from the rain, but the two men would finally come to an agreement and shake hands. Then the trader would quietly close the door to his family-wagon (no one wakes up, just the kid strapped in to the back seat moves distrustfully) and drives off.

No one planned it. It just happened. There where no themes banned or propagated: a total free-for-all. We only had our subject in common, and everyone made their own ends meet somehow.  There were strong decisions and ideal arrangements, but not everything went to plan: one photographer managed to get his car stuck in up to the axles amidst the sands of  the Bledow Desert, taking three men all night to pull it out onto terra firma. One photographer built a tower three meters tall out of pallets, then managed to scale it with a monkey-like ability only to then hold his breath for a fair few second: any movement would be a waste of negative. One met a Native Indian in Limanowa - nothing special, but Limanowa isn't exactly Canada... A photographer went to a wedding and painstakingly helped on the best man with his highland shorts, and then was in charge of the tightening and loosening of his highland shoe cords, once they had been re-knotted for the nth time. That kind of stuff happened. Something we were even surprised at what we saw. The rest lies in the following pages.

Text by: Wojciech Nowicki

The authors of photographs: Jakub Dąbrowski, Andrzej Georgiew, Andrzej Kramarz, Przemysław Krzakiewicz, Piotr Lelek, Weronika Łodzińska, Krzysztof Miękus, Wojciech Nowicki, Wojciech Prażmowski, Konrad Pustota, Szymon Rogiński, Piotr Trybalski, Łukasz Trzciński, Zorka Project

Partners of the project:

- The Visavis.pl Photographers' Collective

- Malopolska Cultural Institute

Anechoic chamber at the AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow. © Lukasz Trzcinski

Mirrored room in the palace in Pilica. © Weronika Lodzinska-Duda

Since the project was completed its ongoing promotion has continued in Poland and abroad. A review of the photographs was exhibited on Krakow's Main Market Square in October 2006. They were also exhibited with the exhibition moving to Cork (Ireland) and Erfurt (Germany) in November and December 2007 respectively.

"Malopolska. Photographs. Unclarified" exhibition at the Main Market Square in Krakow ©Pawel Ulatowski

The project is accompanied by a photographic album under the same name and was co-produced by the Imago Mundi Foundation and the Malopolska Cultural Institute.