Autor: M. Smolak,
Fotograf: Tomasz Olszewski
Ausstattung: 144 Seiten, in englischer Sprache, 188 schwarz-weiß-Fotos, Format 24 x 32,8 cm, Hardcover mit Schutzumschlag
Inhalt: Der Bildband präsentiert Breslau in den 60er Jahren.
TOMASZ OLSZEWSKI, photographer
Born in 1929 in Warsaw, he moved to Lower Silesia in 1945 and settled with his family in Szklarska Poręba. An economist and geographer by education (a graduate of the University of Wrocław), he devoted his creative life to photography. His first photo was taken in 1953 and from 1955 onwards he has held regular exhibitions of his works. In 1959 he became a member of the Union of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF). In the years 1959–1969 he lived and worked in Wrocław, next in Białystok and Jelenia Góra and in 1996 he returned to Szklarska Poręba. He participated in many domestic and international exhibitions. In his Wrocław period he had five individual exhibitions: “Dresden – City and People”, “Form and Content”, “Wrocław Old and New”, “Wrocław 1945–1965”, “My Beautiful City – My Strange City”. He is also the author of two albums of photographs: Wrocław 1945–1965 (Warsaw 1965, with text by Ignacy Rutkiewicz) and My City (Wrocław-Warsaw-Kraków-Gdańsk 1972). In 1968 he received the artistic prize of the City of Wrocław, photographic section.
Since 1959 he worked for the Department of Architecture at the Presidium of the National Council of the City of Wrocław, he carried out a thorough recording of the building and rebuilding of Wrocław. It was the period when he took many excellent photographs showing the Wrocław of the 1960s: the omnipresent traces of the Second World War, the clearing and reconstruction of the city, the construction of new housing estates. Since he was interested in sociology, he took documentary photos showing street life as well as important events and celebrations. City panoramas photographed from high viewpoints as well as shots of individual buildings and their fragments composed in spectacular views are of particular note.
Tomasz Olszewski’s photographs, apart from their artistic value, have another advantage – now they are an important pictorial record of the times – of Wrocław in the 1960s.
The collection of the photographs of Wrocław by Tomasz Olszewski was bought by the City Museum of Wrocław in 2007 and is kept in the Department of Iconography of Wrocław. The exhibition is accompanied by a photograph album.
