The Museum of Photography in Krakow is holding a new main exhibition titled “What does a photo do?” Prepared by the curatorial team, it is the first exhibition in Poland that presents the history of photography, and its present and future in a comprehensive manner.

Divided into five parts, the exhibition introduces the viewer to the world of various photographic techniques, allowing him to understand not only how contemporary photographic prints are made, but also learn what methods were previously used to record images on paper.

The title “What does the picture do?” perfectly reflects the multidimensional approach to photography adopted by the curatorial team of the Krakow Museum. By asking the question “what does” – and therefore “how it works”, but also, in a colloquial sense – “what creates” or “what constitutes” a photo, curators reach a number of topics related to the photographic process, ways of using photos and cultural significance photography.

Visitors can see the most important Polish photographers whose works are in the Krakow collection – from the patron of the museum, Walery Rzewuski and the author of the so-called “Treasure from Limanowa”, amateur photographer Klementyna Zubrzycka-Bączkowska, Jerzy Lewczyński, Zofia Rydet and Zygmunt Rytka, to contemporary artists such as Robert Kuśmirowski or Anna Orłowska.

The exhibition consists of about 1,000 items from the collections of the Museum of Photography in Krakow – prints and photo albums, glass plates, negatives and photographic equipment. The variety of the presented objects not only reflects the richness of the museum’s collections but above all is evidence of a broad view of photography.

The new permanent exhibition treats photography broadly, showing it as a world-changing technology, an intimate way of recording, and at the same time a companion and a tool for endless global changes.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński