“So Calm Around Thus Far” – About the Photographs from Before the Catastrophe Described in Selected Literary Works (Stefan Chwin, Ryszard Kapuściński, Wisława Szymborska) Cover Image
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Ale na razie tu cisza” – fotografie sprzed katastrofy w wybranych zapisach literackich (Stefan Chwin, Ryszard Kapuściński, Wisława Szymborska)
“So Calm Around Thus Far” – About the Photographs from Before the Catastrophe Described in Selected Literary Works (Stefan Chwin, Ryszard Kapuściński, Wisława Szymborska)

Author(s): Magdalena Strąk
Subject(s): History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Culture and social structure
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Photography; time perspective; Chwin; Kapuścinski; Szymborska; Barthes; Sontag; war; memories

Summary/Abstract: The work aims to show a peculiar perspective of looking at photographs taken on the eve of the broadly understood disaster, which is specified in a slightly different way in each of the literary texts (Stefan Chwin’s autobiographical novel Krótka historia pewnego żartu [The brief history of a certain joke], a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński Na wystawie „Fotografia chłopów polskich do 1944 r.” [At an exhibition “The Polish peasants in photographs to 1944”] and Wisława Szymborska’s Fotografia z 11 września [Photograph from September 11]) – as death in a concentration camp, a general concept of the First World War or a terrorist attack. Upcoming tragic events – of which the photographed people are not yet aware – become for the subsequent recipient an inseparable element of reality contained in the frame. For the later observers, privileged with time perspective, the characters captured in the photograph are already victims of the catastrophe, which in reality was not yet recorded by the camera. It is a work about coexistence of the past and future in the field of photography.

  • Issue Year: 468/2020
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 65-80
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish