The second group exhibition of Krakow Photomonth will take place in the basement of Potocki Palace, featuring works by Susanne Keichel, Susanne Kriemann, Tobias Zielony, Anna Orłowska, Jadwiga Janowska, Jonas Höschl, Arwed Messmer and Wojciech Wilczyk.
The exhibited projects explore themes such as the histories and weight of a place, such as St Anne’s Mountain in Anna Orłowska’s project, which reveals the deep historical and identity-related connections embedded in the landscape and rituals. Wojciech Wilczyk’s project evokes the abolition of serfdom in what is now Poland, recorded in the space through the crosses erected by the freed peasants. Susanne Kriemann examines a more-than-human landscape: one wounded by humans, yet gradually processing its traumas. It is precisely this landscape that becomes a source of imagery for the artist.
Whilst Jadwiga Janowska’s project explores Gliwice Radio Station with a sense of ease and detachment as a symbol of place and identity, Jonas Höschl’s video installation will introduce us to the world of contemporary neo-Nazi movements in Germany, questioning the mediatised nature of political photography – asking whether we are capable of documenting extremism, without legitimising it or turning it into a spectacle. Tobias Zielony’s new video work approaches the same question, but from the other side: it examines movements along the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, addressing pushbacks, militarisation and espionage in a form that hovers on the edge of recognisability.
In Chapter III, which focuses on landscape and photography as a convention and technique of representation, the human clashes with the inhuman, and the historical with the symbolic.
