Agnieszka Pajączkowska (born 1986) is a cultural studies scholar, researcher of the history of everyday photographic practices, curator, visual educator and cultural animator. She co-authored the book “And What Did You Think?” with Aleksandra Zbroja, and is the author of the “Wędrowny Zakład Fotograficzny” project and book, as well as the essay collection “Nieprzezroczyste. Historie chłopskiej fotografii”, for which she received nominations for the Paszporty Polityki and Empik Discoveries awards. She was twice awarded a scholarship by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of visual arts (2015 and 2020). She is a graduate of doctoral studies at the Institute of Polish Culture of the University of Warsaw. In 2016, she received the “Kulturystka Roku” title awarded by Radiowy Dom Kultury; in 2020, she won the Beata Pawlak Award and the Wiesław Kazanecki Award. She was also nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award and the Stanisław Barańczak Award. She lives in the Izera Foothills.
During the meeting, we will discuss the latest book, “Nieprzezroczyste. Historie chłopskiej fotografii”.
Peasant photography—family and private photography—usually has no separate place in archives or institutions. For many decades, few people were interested in it; it was not treated as part of the “national heritage”. The small number of surviving collections gives an idea of how many photographs and stories can never be recovered, and how many photographs were burned, discarded or never found.
Photography is not transparent—it does not show things “as they are”, neutrally or objectively. The same is true of history when it is written from only one perspective. Much in the interpretation of photography and history depends on the angle from which we look, on the material that has survived and on noticing what has so far been overlooked.
In the book, the author describes selected peasant photographs and supplements her observations with conversations, oral-history records, documents, micro-reportages, theoretical reflections, quotations from essays on photography and new reflections on popular history. At the heart of the book is the question of what exactly it is that we see. What does photography not show or resolve? This is not so much a story about the people visible in the photographs as it is about the photographs themselves and those who took them—male and female photographers—their motivations, working methods and place in rural communities. Viewed in this way, peasant photographs offer a less obvious perspective on 20th-century Polish history.
Nieprzezroczyste is an attempt to turn our gaze towards what has so far been noticed too rarely—the third plane, the background, and the things and people outside the frame. (Information: Wydawnictwo Czarne).
The meeting will take place on 11 June 2024 at 6:00 p.m.. Admission is free!
(Header photo: Mikołaj Starzyński, agapajaczkowska.pl).