The Foundation for Visual Arts, in collaboration with the Zofia Rydet Foundation, the Museum in Gliwice, and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, are proud to present the ambitious archival project dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Zofia Rydet’s magnum opus—the immense photographic series “Sociological Record.” The result of this ongoing research is now available to the public, via the website and an online database.
“Sociological Record” (realized between 1978 and 1997), represents one of the most important achievements in 20th-century Polish photography. Of canonical significance, the work has nevertheless remained something of a challenge for scholars and art critics alike, owing to the sheer breadth of the project’s scope and Rydet’s prolific industriousness. At the time of Zofia Rydet’s death in 1997, the “Sociological Record” had come to encompass some 16,000 negatives, many of which were never to see the light of day during Rydet’s career. The concept for the “Sociological Record” came into focus when Rydet was 67—she began then to work on a sweepingly comprehensive photographic “portrait” of Polish domestic life. Works from the series are included in such collections as Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York, Museum of Arts in Łódź and the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.
The “Sociological Record,” which was celebrated in the circles of Polish avant-garde artists, extends beyond the realm of visual art; information embedded between its stratified layers continues to be of scholarly relevance to researchers in other disciplines: anthropologists, ethnographers, sociologists, cultural theorists, etc. The artist wrote: “My ‘record’ is not a reportage. It is consciously—if I can put it that way—posed, though I would also deny this, because having a person look straight into the camera is not a pose. I do not act as a director, I don’t arrange the objects or the people; (…). They are their own directors.”
The online “Sociological Record” archive is complemented by relevant source material, including previously unpublished letters written by Rydet. The next stages of the project will include the publication of a monographic album by the Museum in Gliwice, an academic conference and a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, planned for autumn 2015.
Digitalisation and dissemination of photographic material from Zofia Rydet’s “Sociological Record” series is organized by the Foundation for Visual Arts. The Rydet archival project is co-organized by the Zofia Rydet Foundation, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Museum in Gliwice.
The project received financial support from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
