The 23rd Lodz FotoFestiwal in Poland will be held until June 23.
This year’s theme, “Letting Go/Liberation”is explained as follows by the organizers:
Fotofestiwal 2024 was born from the collective need to overcome curatorial boundaries. Accustomed to designing each edition around a theme, this year took the idea of letting go, of encountering a free approach, associated with multiple readings, without restriction. Thus, the artists invited to the current edition will present works that take up the challenge of liberating oneself: freeing oneself from outdated socio-political structures, offering liberation from a traumatic past and inner pressures, as well as visual contexts and boundaries that seem limit our perception.
We have selected 3 exhibitions: Martin Kollar, Peter Pfluger, Michalina Kacperak
The photographic archives of Martin Kollar evoke the experience of the death of a dear and loved person. Here is his text!
AFTER
August 31, 2019… from that moment on, my way of seeing the world changed. Everything changed. Maria’s premature death, her decision to end her life, is a distinct break, a clear demarcation of before and after.
Then, as time slowly passed, I began cautiously going through the photographic archives and dozens of documents collected while traveling, scouting, and filming together. In recent years, we visited various research centers and scientific institutes and started preparing and shooting the film Letopis. This had to be our film.
The excursion into our past life through the archives took place in several stages, ranging from an inability to bring myself to open the files, to obsessive periods where I could do nothing but continually peruse the multitude images, revisiting the years, months and days spent together.
Contexts and hidden threads that I hadn’t noticed before began to emerge and I began to connect them. My goal was not to rebuild our life but rather to see it as an expression of my desire to capture how the before transcends the after. And how even highly anticipated events always find you unprepared.
Martin Kollar
Fotofestiwal
June 13-23, 2024
https://fotofestiwal.com/2024/en/
