Stefania Gurdowa. NEGATIVES ARE TO BE STORED

Stefania Gurdowa - "Negatives are to be stored"

On the cardboard prints, coming from the pre-war photographic studios, photographers would usually place the formula ‘the negatives are to be stored'. It can be read literally, as a testimony to the fastidiousness and thrift in craftsmanship, but a slight shift of the accent allows seeing that innocent, technical inscription in the eschatological dimension. Yes, very much so - eschatological. I am heading towards the statement that the radiating power of these glass images comes from the unabating conviction (which accompanies the viewing) that there is only a thin partition separating the living from the dead. Maybe the click of the shutter. In other words, the dead are not - it would be difficult to say that in other words - entirely dead. That they were as if only temporarily frozen IN VITRO, or - to take this phrase purely etymologically - simply ‘in the glass', in this archetype of fragility and brittleness.

The collection of negatives by Stefania Gurdowa is a catalogue of silent presences. Here we have before us images made lasting upon glass. What Giorgio Agamben wrote about photographs refers to them as well: "they are a testimony to the countless names that have fallen into oblivion. They can be compared to the book of life that the new angel of the Apocalypse - the angel of photography - holds in his hands on the last day, that is on every day".

from the introduction by Dariusz Czaja

Other texts in the book are written by JERZY LEWCZYNSKI and AGNIESZKA SABOR.