From March 17, the History Meeting House in Warsaw is inviting guests to an exhibition of photographs by Czesław Olszewski – one of the most outstanding Polish architectural photographers. On several thousand negatives, the author recorded modernizing Poland of the 1930s and its reconstruction after World War II.

Olszewski photographed the buildings of ministries and post offices, schools and hospitals, cooperative housing estates and luxurious tenement houses. His photos are a valuable historical source and delight for artistic reasons. He developed a style and technique that are appreciated also today.

The exhibition at the History Meeting House is the first such large presentation of Olszewski’s photographs. It consists of photos from the archives of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the National Museum in Warsaw and the Museum of Warsaw, as well as the private collections of Prof. Andrzej Olszewski. It includes photographs taken in Warsaw, Gdynia, Ciechocinek and Nowa Huta – both pre-war and previously unpublished post-war photos.

The curators, an art historian and critic Marta Leśniakowska and a photographer Tomasz Kubaczyk, selected 95 photos out of almost 7,000 (mostly glass) negatives and prints.

“It is a valuable source of knowledge about the architectural culture in Poland before 1939, about partially non-existent or destroyed buildings.  Czesław Olszewski was a careful observer, sensitive to the form of an object, surface texture, play of light, highlighted in the nuances of black and white,” said Leśniakowska.

At the exhibition, viewers can see buildings well known to Warsaw residents: the Jan Wedel tenement house, the characteristic “House under the sail”, Prudential house (now Hotel Warszawa), as well as the spectacular but no longer existing modernist pavilions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Polish Fiat Salon and the 10th Anniversary Stadium.

Olszewski’s photos will become part of the free “Your Warsaw” application. Together with historical contexts and curiosities, they will allow users to go for a walk in the modernist city or look at it at home.

“It’s kind of the time machine. Thanks to putting Czesław Olszewski’s photos of Warsaw on the map, we can look around in the contemporary capital and compare it to history, see what was happening in a given place or learn better the places we pass every day” says the project coordinator Agnieszka Tomasińska.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński