Exposing Wounds: Traces of Trauma in Post-War Polish Photography

20 
 
twentieth century photography has been researched by several authors including Matthew 
Witkovsky’s Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945 (2007) which featured a 
large amount of work by Polish photographers, or Les chef-d'œuvres de la photographie 
polonaise, 1912-1948 [Masterpieces of Polish photography, 1912-1948] (1992);
 
and 
contemporary Polish photography has increasingly received critical attention, for 
example, Polish Perceptions: Ten Contemporary Photographers, 1977-88 (1998), Nowi 
Dokumentaliści [The New Documentalists] (2006) and Konceptualizm: medium 
fotograficzne [Conceptual art: photographic medium] (2010).  
Relatively few publications on Polish photography focus on the post war years. 
Exceptions include Joanna Kordjak-Piotrowska’s Egzystencje: Polska fotografia 
awangardowa, 2. połowy lat 50. [Existences: Polish Avant-Garde Photography from the 
second half of the 1950s] (2005) or Rafał Lewandowski’s Neorealism in Polish 
Photography 1950-1970 (2015), a collection of essays that explore the influence of Italian 
cinema on Polish photography from the 1950s. This thesis aims to research further into 
this post-war period by drawing on psychoanalytic theory to analyse the photographs 
produced in these years. Theories of psychoanalysis expounded by Freud appear to have 
informed the thinking of Polish artists. The quote by Kantor at the beginning of this 
introduction is clearly indebted to the writings of Freud; similarly, the artist Zbigniew 
Dłubak retrospectively recognised the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory to artists of his 
generation attempting to work through the traumas of the war, as we shall see in the 
following chapter. At this most traumatic of times in the nation’s history, it is surprising 
how few commentators have attempted to analyse the work of post-war Polish art 
photography in this way. Most accounts of photography from this period overlook 
traumatic aspects of the work in favour of a focus on cultural history. In contrast, studies 
addressing Polish film, theatre and sculpture have readily adopted this methodology. The 
theatre of Tadeusz Kantor has scrutinised for the ways in which productions such as The 
Dead Class (1975) and Wielopole, Wielopole (1980) explore themes of memory, history 
and trauma.
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 The productions and installations of Józef Szajna have been examined in 
similar ways. Alina Szapocknikow’s sculptures have been discussed in terms of their 
                                                      
35
 Jarosław Suchan and Marek  wica, eds., Tadeusz Kantor, interior of imagination (Warsaw: Zach ta 
National Gallery of Art; Cracow: Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor Cricoteka, 
2005); Magda Romanska, The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor: History and Holocaust in 
‘Akropolis’ and ‘Dead Class’ (London: Anthem Press, 2012); Milija Gluhowic, Performing European 
Memories: Trauma, Ethics, Politics, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 

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inscription of personal and collective traumas.
36
 Elsewhere, Luiza Nader has analysed a 
series of ten photo collages, made by Władysław Strzemiński between 1945 and 1947, 
using Freud’s concept of the ‘Wunderblock’ to consider the construction of memory in 
Strzemiński’s collages.
37
 Wajda’s films, and those of the Polish Film School, have also 
been scrutinised for their compulsion to relive the wounding experience of war.
38
  In 
contrast, most accounts of art photography from this period overlook traumatic aspects of 
the work in favour of a focus on the historical development of the medium. 
In the introduction to his survey Antologia fotografii polskiej: 1839-1989, the 
photographer Jerzy Lewczyński acknowledged the incompleteness of his project: “An 
anthology is always a selection. I regret not being able to present in this album all the 
eminent Polish photographers and their works.”
39
 This is also something that I must 
concede. This thesis does not present a complete chronology of Polish art photography in 
the twenty five years after the Second World War. Within the parameters of this thesis, 
this would be both impossible and undesirable. By gravitating towards works that I 
believe bear traces of trauma, I have had to neglect many other equally compelling 
photographers, whose work proved less relevant here to my stated aims. Certainly, a 
focus on trauma is not the only way in which Polish photography in the post war period 
could be discussed.  In prioritising this organising principle, I have taken the lead from 
another photographer discussed in the following chapters, Zbigniew Dłubak, who 
articulated the role of a critic in a 1955 article in Fotografia [Photography] magazine, “In 
this whole jumble the critic must find facts that interest them, find the essence of the 
development of the field, and evaluate the work as part of a wider phenomenon, to see if 
this is a step backwards or a step forward in the general progress of the arts.”
40
 What 
interests me is work that approaches the subject of trauma, but approaches it obliquely, 
                                                      
36
 See the chapter “Traumatic encryption: The sculptural dissolutions of Alina Szapocznikow” in Griselda 
Pollock, After-affects, after images: Trauma and aesthetic transformation in the virtual feminist museum 
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 
37
 Luiza Nader, “Strzemiński's Wunderblock. In Memory of Friends – Jews,” RIHA Journal 0106, Special 
Issue, ‘Contemporary Art and Memory’ (31 December 2014). Accessed April 9, 2017. 
http://www.riha-
journal.org/articles/2014/2014-oct-dec/special-issue-contemporary-art-and-memory-part-1/nader-
strzeminski-en.
 
38
 John Orr and Elzbieta Ostrowski, eds., The cinema of Andrzej Wajda: the art of irony and defiance, 
(London: Wallflower Press, 2003). 
39
 Jerzy Lewczyński, Antologia fotografii polskiej: 1839-1989 (Bielsko-Biała: Wydawnictwo LUCRUM, 
1999), 6. 
40
 Zbigniew Dłubak, “O właściwy kierunek dyskusji” [On the right direction for discussion], Fotografia, 
no. 1 (January 1955): 8-9. 

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