Wojciech Prazmowski - Mala Gallery, Warsaw

Mala Gallery
8 Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw, Poland
March 4-30, 2003

Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze"


Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze" Mala Gallery, Warsaw, March 2003

Zarzecze - a registration in colour

HERE ARE SOME SPECIAL TOWNS and places that have a magic which make us to visit them again and again. This is also the case of Zarzecze, a quarter of Vilna. Someone that was there once will be later attracted to this place by a kind of invisible magnet. The reason for this seems to be unique atmosphere of this part of the town, its human scale architecture, configuration of its streets, appearance of old, not yet completly renewed houses and alleys. But not facades of overgrown with legends tenant houses or bridges over Wilejka River are the subject of photographs of Wojciech Prazmowski. The artist managed in his colour pictures to penetrate into the core of the phenomenon of Zarzecze, to record on his photographs a melancholic atmosphere of this unusual place.

Prazmowski photographed its nooks and corners, backyards, fragments of green vegetation breaking in everywhere and their seasonal changes of colour. These pictures are based mostly on colour relations - perhaps this is a feature that makes Zarzecze so a popular place among painters of Vilna.

Colour photography does not have to trivialize the world - of what it was accused recently by orthodox followers of the traditional black and white technique. The colour photography can simply reinterpret this world, to enrich it and to enhance in a way its value by turning our attention in absolutely unexpected direction.

Wojciech Prazmowski has decided to show on his colour photographs in a strictly documentary way a quite different, unknown aspect of this unusual "republic of artists".

By photographing visual elements of rich assortment of shapes of various strange things, unexpected associations, surprising colour juxtapositions and places not quite attractive for tourists and almost banal he created his own inner map of Zarzecze - the neigbourhood with extraordinary atmosphere and charm confirmed by these selected dozen or so colour recordings.

It turns out that they in their purity are equally effective and that they convey a truth about this particular place in unexpectedly strong way.

Marek Grygiel

Transl.: Krzysztof Wojciechowski


Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze" Mala Gallery, Warsaw, March 2003

Wojciech Prazmowski (born 1949) photographs from 1969. He studied photography in Brno, Czechoslovakia from 1972 to 1974. He is a lecturer at the Higher Photographic School of the State Film, Theatre and Television Academy in Łódź and the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. Lives in Częstochowa.

Wojciech Prazmowski presented his works at numerous individual and group exhibitions in Poland, Europe, USA and Japan. He published several photographic books. His works are in many public and private collections in Poland and abroad.


Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze" Mala Gallery, Warsaw, March 2003

Prazmowski's erlier exhibitions in Mala Gallery:

1988 - "World's First Exibition of Spoiled Photos"
1997 - "Very still lifes
2000 - "White-Red-Black"
2002 - Collection II - 25 years of Mala Gallery

See also:

In fotoTAPETA:

All Mala Gallery exhibitions since 1997


Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze" Mala Gallery, Warsaw, March 2003


Wojciech Prazmowski: "Zarzecze" Mala Gallery, Warsaw, March 2003

Spis treści