The photographs of Adam Bień
Fotografia Adama Bienia

Summary/Abstract: Adam Bień (1899-1998; ill. 21), lawyer, activist of the peasants movement, politician and writer, arrested by the Soviet authorities in 1945 and sentenced in Moscow to five years imprisonment at the trial of the leaders of the Underground Polish State (the so-called Trial of the Sixteen), was for many years an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He began taking photographs in 1931 with a Contax camera produced by the firm Zeiss Ikon. (ill. 18) A notebook was preserved in his family’s archives, containing precise entries up to 1938, detailing the dates, subject, type of negative, aperture, distance, exposure time and evaluation of each picture taken. This constitutes excellent material for researchers interested in the history of techniques used by photographers in the 1930s. In 1935 Bień purchased a photographic enlarger made by the Rajah firm and began developing his pictures himself. In 1952 he even passed an apprenticeship exam, as in the face of the impossibility of continuing his legal career after his return from imprisonment in Russia, he planned to become a professional photographer. The authorities of the Polish Peoples Republic, however, allowed him to set up a legal practice in the provinces. The author of the article, the granddaughter of Adam Bień , describes and analyses his photographic legacy, made up largely of family photographs (ill. 26), photographs of architecture (normally on its own, without human figures, ills. 27-29), landscapes (often featuring a human element; ill. 25), and sporadically of people (ill. 22) and important events (for example the funeral procession of Józef Piłsudski in Warsaw in 1935; ills. 20-21).

• Details
• Contents