three gelatin-silver prints on RC paper joined at the back with tape, 40 x 90 cm (total)
signed, dated, author's stamps and title "Found from Sanok 1963" on the back
The triptych shown here is one of the artist's more recognizable works and belongs to that part of his oeuvre in which he used found negatives. It was his work with the theme of memory, especially in the post-war context. He also presented these images in positive form, but here he explored the characteristics and operation of the negative image, explaining that "(...) the negative becomes the first and reliable witness."
BIO
Using found, borrowed and forgotten photographs in the vast majority of his work, Lewczynski created works relating to issues of memory, the past and symbol. He was the author of the term "archeology of photography," which he explained as "an activity whose purpose is to discover, study and comment on events, facts, situations happening in the past, in the so-called photographic past." He graduated from the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. Since 1951 he was a member of the Gliwice Photographic Society, and since 1956. - a member of the ZPAF. In 1959, together with Bronislaw Schlabs and Zdzislaw Beksinski, he organized the famous Closed Show, called Antiphotography. Author of Anthology ofPolish Photography 1839-1989 (Lucrum, 1999). More important monographic publications of the artist are Jerzy Lewczynski. Archaeology of Photography. Works from 1941-2005 (Kropka, 2005) and Jerzy Lewczyński. Memory of the Image (Museum in Gliwice, 2012). His works are in the collections of the Museum in Gliwice, the Art Museum in Lodz, the National Museum in Wroclaw, among others.
