Irena Jarosińska – Lublin 1954 | Photography exhibition in the Hartwig Alley
Visit the exhibition of Irena Jarosińska’s photographs. The exhibition presents extraordinary photos that Irena took during her stay in Lublin in June and July 1954. Visitors will have a chance to see the moment of the city’s spatial transformation and the unique phenomenon of the total solar eclipse-the the last one to have been witnessed in Poland.
About the event
The photographs document the city’s reconstruction and renovation efforts, undertaken between 1950 and 1962. The major phase of these repairs began a few months before July 1954 in preparation for the 10th anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic. As a first step, the prison in the Lublin Castle was closed, and the reconstruction of the Old Town began. The reconstruction works of 1954 also led to the building of a new urban structure – Plac Zebrań Ludowych, People’s Gatherings Square (today’s Zamkowy Square), located on the site of the Jewish quarter razed by the Nazis.
Jarosińska’s photographs of Lublin also depict the Central Agricultural Exhibition that began on 21 July in the Lublin Castle hill area. For three months, it allowed visitors to learn about the achievements and scale of the expansion of the Polish agricultural industry from 1944 to 1954.
After years of obscurity, the vast photographic legacy of Irena Jarosińska, consisting of more than 60,000 objects, found its way into the KARTA Centre’s Archive of Photographs. From 2013 to 2016, the entire collection was digitised, catalogued, secured, and made available online with funding from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.
About the artist
Irena Jarosińska was born in 1924 in the Hutsul village of Shybene, and died in Warsaw in 1996. In 1949, she started working in the Photography Department of the Ministry of Culture and Art, and joined the Association of Polish Art Photographers a year later. In the 1950s, she began photographing for the press, including the weekly “Świat” and, from 1957, the monthly “Polska”. She was closely associated with the neo-avant-garde artistic milieu, notably the Krzywe Koło Gallery, where she held solo exhibitions. From the mid-1970s, she ran an open house and studio that brought together budding photographers and their masters, and served as a venue for exhibitions, happenings, and performances.
This exhibition has been organised in partnership with the KARTA Centre and made possible courtesy of Andrzej Pieniążek, heir to the rights to Irena Jarosińska’s photographs.
Details
When: June 2022 – outdoor exhibition available at all times
Where: The Hartwig Alley
Admission free