Subwersywna moc prywatnych kolekcji fotografii. Żydzi w polskiej pamięci zbiorowej po upadku komunizmu

Date

2017

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

DOI

Volume Title

Publisher

Konteksty: Antropologia Kultury-Etnografia-Sztuka

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

In 1994 the Jewish-Polish Shalom Foundation announced a photographic contest whose intention was to reconstruct the social and cultural histories of Polish Jews who lived in the geographical region of Poland before, during and after the Second World War. For this purpose the Foundation invited contributions from the public. Its initiative emerged shortly after the 1989 collapse of the communist regime in Poland, and alongside other similar projects that reflected the desire of Poland’s ethnic minorities to salvage their sociocultural histories – histories the communist government had virtually erased from the country’s formal historiography. In a short period of time the Foundation received more than seven thousand annotated photographs in response to its public appeal, most of which emanated from domestic photographic collections. As scholars interrogating domestic photography do not often have access to empirical data about the practices it entails, in this article we consider the Foundation photographic collection as a resource preserving invaluable information about the diverse uses and perceptions of photography in the sociocultural sphere. Yet, whereas existing scholarly literature in the field of photography studies tends to frame domestic photography with reference to affectionate familial behaviors allegedly common in democratic states, we introduce the Foundation collection as a case study that sheds light on domestic photographs created and maintained in a sociocultural environment that did not see democracy before 1989. Analyzing and discussing the various ways in which the photographs’ owners saw the photographs’ relationships with the broader politically unstable reality that has enclosed their production and preservation, our study diversifies some of the meanings and functions current literature often associates with domestic photographic collections.

Please note: This is a Polish translation of Pasternak, Gil and Marta Ziętkiewicz. 2017. Beyond the Familial Impulse: Domestic Photography and Sociocultural History in Post-communist Poland, 1989-1996. Photography & Culture 10(2), Special Issue: Seeing Family: 121-145.

Description

This is a Polish translation of an article we originally published in another peer-reviewed journal: Pasternak, Gil and Marta Ziętkiewicz. 2017. Beyond the Familial Impulse: Domestic Photography and Sociocultural History in Post-communist Poland, 1989-1996. Photography & Culture 10(2), Special Issue: Seeing Family: 121-145.

Keywords

photography, domestic photography, domestic photographic collections, Polish Jews, Poland’s ethnic minorities, Polish collective memory, photography contest, Shalom Foundation, And I Still See Their Faces, photographic history

Citation

Pasternak, G. and M. Ziętkiewicz. 2017. Subwersywna moc prywatnych kolekcji fotografii. Żydzi w polskiej pamięci zbiorowej po upadku komunizmu. Konteksty: Antropologia Kultury-Etnografia-Sztuka LXXI(3): 212-224 (Polish).

Rights

Research Institute