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Krakow Photomonth Festival 2015

Conflict
14 maja– 14 czerwca

We are inviting you for the 13th edition of the Krakow Photomonth Festival. The theme of it will be conflict. The curator of the Main Programme, Wojciech Nowicki, has invited to Krakow both legends of world photography and rising stars of contemporary art.

The subject of the Main Programme at Krakow Photomonth 2015 is conflict, and its curator is Wojciech Nowicki, renowned critic, collector, writer and photographer. The programme will include exhibitions of great of world photography, Josef Koudelka, as well as artistic-documentary exhibitions (such as Zhang Dali’s series on censorship of photography in Maoist China). The photographs of multiple award-winner Joanna Piotrowska (e.g. for her series Frowst) look at the dual, love-hate nature of close relations, while Indre Šerpytyte’s (1944–1991) work tackles the subject of memory. Markus Schaden (director of the Photobook Museum in Cologne) will curate an exhibition on representation of conflicts in photo books, and Paweł Szypulski is to tackle the subject of gender and race in photography. Łukasz Gorczyca and Adam Mazur use albums and books to tell the history of appropriation (political and otherwise) of a national symbol – the River Vistula. Finally, Wojciech Nowicki – as the curator of one of the exhibitions – will focus on the times when photography appears helpless: using documentary photos he will capture moments when the lens is pointing the wrong way.

As usual, the exhibitions of the Main Programme are taking place in Krakow’s best exhibition spaces, including Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Manggha Museum and the Ethnographic Museum.

The ShowOFF Section promises to be equally interesting, presenting the premieres of projects of young artists selected in an open competition. They are currently finalising the form of the exhibitions under the watchful eye of renowned visual arts specialists: curator and owner of Leto Gallery in Warsaw Marta Kołakowska, American photographer and member of the famous Agence VU’ Michael Ackerman, photographer and lecturer Igor Olumecki, and multi-award-winning artist and filmmaker Martin Kollar. The curators are joined by Ania Nałęcka, an outstanding Polish designer associated with the Sputnik Photos collective, who will produce a photo book together with one of the ShowOFF Section winners.

The ShowOFF 2015 winners are: Ilias Georgiadis, Helio Leon, Łukasz Kuś, Gabriel Orłowski, Wiktor Dąbkowski, Michał Smandek, Dorotka Kaczmarek, Anna Zagrodzka.

Another important element of the festival programme will be the latest edition of the Portfolio Review, accompanied by the Griffin Art Space prize. Also part of the programme are dozens of accompanying events: meetings, projections, workshops and actions.

All events and exhibitions take place in Krakow, from 14 May to 14 June 2015.