During his long practice – starting with the first surviving photographs dating back to 1944, until the present – Tadeusz Rolke has been trying to ‘capture the moment’ with his camera. For many years he worked as a reporter, providing a record of happenings in the Foksal Gallery and working as a fashion photographer for the magazine Przekrój. In the exhibition at MOCAK, we present the photographs retrieved, courtesy of the author, from his Warsaw archives by Witek Orski, an artist and curator collaborating with the Warsaw gallery Czułość.

Thanks to the meeting of the two photographers, we have an opportunity to explore the backstage of Rolke’s work with models. As in Helmut Newton’s famous album Us and Them, we can observe not only the effects of the photographer’s work, but also see him surrounded by his models. Instead of admiring female bodies, we are invited to watch the development of the relationship between the photographer and his models. We get to know the artist himself. The fashion prevalent in People’s Poland provides a backdrop to a story that could not happen today. Instead of a well developed industry, we watch small groups in meeting; instead of the products of global corporations, we have crude clothes made in Poland.

Tadeusz Rolke (b. 1929) – a classical Polish photo-reporter. During his long-spanning career, he had worked for such magazines as Ty i Ja, Przekrój, Stolica, and Świat. During the 70s, he emigrated to West Germany where in Hamburg he created his acclaimed series Fischmarkt. After his return to Poland in the 1980s, he published three albums. Presently, he lives and works in Warsaw.

Exhibition organizer