Belarusian Presence at Warsaw’s Night of Photography: From Atsietski’s Projections to the Legacy of Bułhak and Life on the Borderlands

On September 4, Warsaw will host the fourth Night of Photography (Noc Fotografii 2026), organized by the Museum of Warsaw’s Photography Center. This 12 months’s theme is “Taming the City” (Oswajanie miasta), a mirrored image on how migrants, artists and residents construct their relationships with the metropolis. A definite Belarusian presence may be seen on this 12 months’s program and preparations for the competition — from members of the organizing workforce to names featured within the projections.

The occasion will start at 7:15 p.m. with the official opening and the presentation of diplomas to the winners of the “Taming the City” competitors. Immediately afterward, from 7:45 p.m. to eight:00 p.m., there can be a one-off unique premiere screening of the winners’ works. From 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., the primary outside projections will happen at six totally different places within the streets of the Old and New Town.

Belarusians on the Organizing Team

Two Belarusians are among the many key names on the competition’s official workforce record.

The writer of the “Square of Changes” venture, Yauhen Atsietski, ready the road projection montages for works by Polish photographers Rafał Milach and Zofia Rydet for the Night of Photography.

Director and graduate of the Belarusian Academy of Arts Ruzhana Kruchkova served as coordinator of the worldwide “Taming the City” images competitors.

Belarusian Parallels

Interestingly, the projections edited by Yauhen Atsietski join worldwide artwork with the Belarusian context.

Rafał Milach is among the best-known modern Polish photographers and a member of the celebrated worldwide company Magnum Photos. He is understood to Belarusians for his photobook “The Winners” — an in-depth and reflective exploration of Belarusian ideology and the truth of the 2010s. Milach has additionally participated a number of occasions within the Month of Photography in Minsk.

At the Night of Photography, Milach’s venture a couple of Vietnamese man named Lin, photographed in 2005 on the Tenth-Anniversary Stadium, can be proven. During the huge hearth on Marywilska Street in 2024, Lin misplaced the whole lot, together with a 20-year household picture archive. Milach’s previous images from the “Ba Lan” venture grew to become the one tangible hint of his former life, which they’re now making an attempt to reconstruct collectively by reminiscences.

Zofia Rydet is a basic of Polish images whose “Sociological Record” (Zapis socjologiczny) venture is thought to be a monumental anthropological archive. Beginning in 1978, when she was 67, she visited hundreds of rural houses, photographing residents of their non-public interiors. A major a part of these images was taken in Podlasie, on the Belarusian-Polish borderlands. Alongside Polish spiritual pictures, her images usually function Orthodox icons adorned with embroidered Belarusian ritual towels often known as “nabozhniki,” in addition to genuine home settings equivalent to these present in villages of the Hrodna and Brest areas.

Warsaw Through the Eyes of Jan and Janusz Bułhak: From Postcards of Prewar Charm to the Ruins of 1945

A specific spotlight for Belarusian readers would be the “J&J Bułhak – 2 × Warszawa” projection, which can be proven within the arcade close to the ZPAF galleries on Kanonia Street. The presentation was created and curated by photographer and documentary filmmaker Wojciech Walkiewicz.

This 12 months marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Jan Bułhak (1876–1950) and the a hundred and twentieth anniversary of the beginning of his son Janusz (1906–1977). Jan Bułhak, a local of the Navahrudak area, was the “father” of East European panorama and local-history images, coined the time period “fotografika,” and was a founding father of Pictorialism. His inventive and educating legacy took form in Minsk, Vilnius, Hrodna and Ashmiany, turning into a basic a part of each Belarusian and Polish cultural heritage.

One element makes his story significantly dramatic: in 1944, in the course of the preventing in Vilnius, his studio was destroyed by hearth, together with round 30,000 negatives — the whole thing of his a few years of labor documenting Belarusian and Lithuanian landscapes. Having misplaced the whole lot, the 69-year-old photographer and his son Janusz arrived amid the ruins of postwar Warsaw to start out once more from scratch.

At the Night of Photography, viewers will see a singular distinction between images used on the time to provide postcards: first, prewar Pictorialist landscapes and pictures bearing the credit score “fot. Jan Bułhak,” adopted by postwar postcards depicting the ruins of town in 1945 and credited “fot. J. Bułhak i Syn.”

What Else Is Worth Seeing?

The program consists of works from the Museum of Warsaw’s collections, in addition to a particular collection of initiatives from Les Rencontres d’Arles — the world’s oldest and most prestigious images competition (the French equal of the Cannes Film Festival on the earth of images).

The accompanying program additionally consists of conferences with Polish and worldwide artists, workshops for kids and adults, in addition to the premiere of the album “Aleksander Minorski. Photography Is an Intervention” (Aleksander Minorski. Fotografia to interwencja).

Admission to all occasions and outside screenings is free. An in depth schedule is obtainable on the Museum of Warsaw’s website.

The venture is curated by Julia Staniszewska.

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