Defining Reality: Photography and the Surrealist Concept of the Image in Poland in the 1940s

Abstract

The text discusses definitions of photography formulated in Poland in the 1940s. The author analyses Zbigniew Dłubak’s series of photographs inspired by the poetry of Pablo Neruda in reference to surrealism, Marxism, and, primarily, to Władysław Strzemiński’s theory of vision. Particular emphasis is placed on the concept of the image shared by Dłubak and Strzemiński, a concept that links the issue of realism with individual expression, allowing for a formal differentiation of representation (abstraction). In consequence, the analysed series by Dłubak is presented as sharing similarities with seemingly formally remote series of collages To My Friends the Jews by Strzemiński. Both demonstrate an ambition to express in the modern form both collective realism as well as individual memory, primarily of the war events. Proposed interpretation suggests that the use and understanding of photography as a medium closely tied to reality had a decisive meaning for the new formula of the image constructed right after 1945 – formula open to experimenting, yet also ideologically radical, addressing the existential problems of the individual involved with the new political order.