On 1 October 2021, VISU-member prof. Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans will present the lecture 'Mix[ed]ing feelings and critique. Witold Wirpsza’s poetic response to The Family of Man ' at the international congress Silver Atlantic. Photographic Circulations (19th-21st century).
Mix[ed]ing feelings and critique. Witold Wirpsza’s poetic response to The Family of Man
Recent scholarship demonstrates that there is still a lot to be said about the reception of The Family of Man worldwide (Azoulay 2016, 2013, Sandeen 2005, 2015, Garb 2015, O’Brian 2008, Zamir 2018). This contribution aims to introduce a lesser known context of the exhibition’s tour. Caught in a complex social and political situation of the Cold War, the American narrative present in the exhibition was met with particularly divergent reactions in Eastern Europe. One of the most surprising critical responses was formulated by the poet Witold Wirpsza. His Commentaries on Photographs: The Family of Man (1962) reveal the contradictory position of the Polish spectator between affect and suspicion. As critical towards the exhibition as Roland Barthes or Allan Sekula, Wirpsza nevertheless engages in a detailed reading and rereading of some of the photographs and sequences. Analyzing this response in its historical and cultural context will enable me to shed light on photographic and discursive exchanges in the region. The main issue that will be addressed pertains to the ways photographic essay can contribute to – then very intense – debates on humanism in the conditions of socialist realism. The constellation of photographs proposed by the exhibition is here reshuffled so that the story of unity and sameness of the human family can be rewritten. At the same time, Wirpsza’s riposte paradoxically discloses his entanglement in theological thinking and a universalist ambition.
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