COLLECTABLE PHOTOGRAPHY

Wiktor Pental „Ideal City”
Wiktor Pental - who documented the first years of Nowa Huta existence, city of dreams Polish communists. His  photographs speak of ordinary lives which the authorities of the Peoples Republic of Poland were not always so keen on. This is why the pictures were kept in a drawer for more than half a century. Although they were taken in one location, they convey the atmosphere of the whole of Poland behind the Iron Curtain.

BIO. Wiktor Pental, born 1920, Woroniszki, Poland. As a prize for coming first in a shooting competition Pental won a Kodak 6x9 camera. As someone who came to Nowa Huta, a city still under construction, he got work as an engineer and was able to spend time on his photographic hobby – a pastime inacessible for ‘mere mortals’. Thanks to his work, a unique record was created, documenting the first years of socialism in Poland. All his photographic work revolves around Nowa Huta, yet people remain at the centre of his attention.
Pental treats people with a warm, loving sense of humour, never with a distance. Nowa Huta was a Perfect City – a leading venture of Polish socialism, a self-sufficient city with its foundations firmly rooted on a metallurgical plant, the Lenin Steelworks. Planned in every possible dimension, from urban space to residents’ free time, the city was to be a unique laboratory that was to produce the ideal socialist being. Pental's works were widely exposed including 802 percent above the norm –see more (http://imagomundi.pl/nasze-dzialania/zrealizowane-projekty/80.html).

Kuba Dąbrowski – "Having a coke with you"
Kuba doesn't like the word 'project' being applied to his work. He says he just takes photographs of whatever surrounds him and then arranges them into sets for a book or an exhibition installation, like a DJ does with a set of records. He also says that he want his photographs to be like songs by a singer/songwriter with a guitar or by a rap MC finding poetry in the most simple facts of life.

BIO: Kuba Dąbrowski - born 1980, in Białystok, Poland. Graduated in Sociology from the Jagiellonian University, and Photography from the ITF in Opava (Czech Republic). From the beginning of this year he lives in Milan. He is a photographer, but he also makes short videos and writes text. His work is published in Polish (e.g. „Przekrój“, „Exklusiv“, „Polityka”) and international (e.g. "Die Zeit”, "PIG") magazines. His subject matter ranges from reporting from Afghanistan to portraying celebrities. Apart from this  daytime work, Kuba has his own 'first person perspective' narration, which from time to time appear in galleries. He has had individual shows in galleries in e.g. Warsaw, Białystok, Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest and Tokyo and he was included in group exhibitions in photo festivals in e.g. Rome, Paris and Moscow. He has published a book, it is entitled 'Western', it was included in the photo-eye.com selection of the best books of 2010.