Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University in Opava: Lenka Bláhová, Maciej Bujko, Ewa Dyslewicz, Kristýna Erbenová, Anna Grzelewska, Anna Gutová and Gabriel Fragner, Kamila Kobierzyńska, Jaroslav Kocián, Daniel Laurinc, Krzysztof Pacholak, Daniel Poláček, Katarzyna Sagatowska, Rafał Siderski, Michaela Spurná, Tomáš Trojan, Magda Veselá, Joanna Ziajka etc.

Curators: Vladimír Birgus, Aleš Kuneš

In 2010, the Institute of Creative Photography at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Silesian University commemorated the twentieth anniversary of its establishment with a large exhibition called the “Opava School of Photography”. It was shown in different versions in Brno, Prague, Oxford, Cologne, Bratislava, Ostrava, Liberec, Warsaw, and Vilnius (and also as a catalogue of almost 300 pages). The photographs taken by Institute students and graduates since the previous large tally in 2006 represented a wide range of styles, topics, and themes. This time the Institute is presenting a far more narrow selection of the latest end-of-term, B.A., M.A. and other degree projects (all the works in the catalogue are from 2011). The topics include authorial self-reflection, interpersonal relations, and family – in other words, the photographers frequently offer the viewer a glimpse into their innermost selves and private lives.

Whereas in America, Western Europe and Japan photographers like Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Anders Petersen, Richard Billingham, Michael Ackerman, Antoine D‘Agata, JH Engström, Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki have for a long time shown raw photos of the most intimate moments of their lives and the lives of their families and friends, in central Europe – at least until recently – this kind of open photo-diary and self-reflexive photograph has, with few exceptions, rarely appeared. In Czech, Slovak and Polish documentary photography, topics of the “outer circle” such as various social groups, devastation of the environment and people under totalitarian regimes as well as continuing globalisation and consumerism in the period after the collapse of Communism dominated over “inner circle” topics. Few photographers were willing to stick their necks out and openly show their own private lives, uncertainties, loneliness, crises and depressions, break-up of their families or deviations from universally acknowledged norms. Nor did positive – yet authentic – pictures of private aspects of life appear often in the Czech Republic. But, as our exhibition also demonstrates, that has strikingly changed in recent years. Thanks to inexpensive compact cameras and increasingly more technologically advanced mobile telephones many more people can today take photographs than ever before. Although the “I, You, We” exhibition includes a number of striking works representing several current trends in terms of topic, subject matter, and style followed at the Institute of Creative Photography of Silesian University in Opava, the range of art photography genres practised at our school is far richer.

GALERIA FF ^[1]
Łódzki Dom Kultury
Traugutta 18
opening hours
Tue–Sat: 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
additionally:
13.05 (Sun) 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
20.05 (Sun) 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.

opening: 12.05, 6 p.m.
exhibition will be held: 12.05–9.06