It is hard to imagine the history of Polish photography without Zofia Rydet’s work, including her humanistic series “Little Man” and “The Passage of Time”, as well as her monumental “Sociological Record”. The exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Kraków will showcase a lesser-known, lyrical side of the artist, one of Poland’s greatest women photographers.

Titled “Zofia Rydet.The World of Feelings and Imagination”, the exhibit will introduce viewers to the photographer’s opus magnum: a series of photo collages that she created before starting work on “Sociological Record”. The works in “The World of Feelings and Imagination”, often composed of fragments of her earlier photographs, may surprise the audience accustomed to Rydet’s documentary style. These surreal collages address deeply humanistic themes. According to the artist, the series is “about humans threatened from the moment of birth, about their feelings and desires, about loneliness, fear that only love can save them from, and about the dread of extermination and the tragedy of time passing.”

This exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Kraków marks the first museum display of this series in years, featuring around 100 works grouped by Rydet into 15 thematic sections. These cover both universal human experiences – such as “Birth”, “Motherhood”, and “Transformations” – and the shared histories of Rydet’s own generation. In “The World of Feelings and Imagination”, more intensely than in any of her other work, one feels the echoes of the war and destruction, resonating even with today’s geopolitical realities.

“Zofia Rydet. The World of Feelings and Imagination” also offers a chance to appreciate the artist’s masterful technique. Her collages, constructed from re-photographed prints, are so meticulously crafted that, if not for their surrealistic nature, one might mistake them for traditional photographs. Thanks to curator Karol Hordziej’s archival research, the exhibition will include several ‘templates’ or preliminary collage forms that Rydet used before completing each work.