Zofia Rydet. Record, 1978-1990 


”Zofia Rydet. Record, 1978–1990” offers the largest presentation thus exhibited of Zofia Rydet’s monumental photographic project Sociological Record. The artist began the development of the cycle in 1978 and continued almost until her death in 1997.

Rydet began working on the cycle at an advanced age (when she was sixty-seven years old) as an established artist with a considerable exhibition portfolio. At the same time she occupied a separate position in the Polish photographic milieu, dominated at the time by male photographers and conceptual tendencies.

"Sociological Record" comprises around 20,000 photographs from more than one hundred villages and towns located mainly in the Polish regions of Podhale, Upper Silesia and the Suwałki area. The hosts of the houses that Rydet visited – photographed with a wide-angle lens and usually with strong flash that brutally brings out the details of the interiors – are portrayed against a wall, looking straight into the camera lens. Rydet repeated the same scheme for nearly three decades.