26.11.2010 - 08.12.2010

PLANET CAUCASUS - photography exhibitions

Two artists, two points of view, different stories and one common denominator – Caucasus.

Caucasus – frontier and community by Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Port of call by Agnieszka Rayss are photographic cycles that illustrate this year’s edition of Meetings with the World, project Planet Caucasus.

Admission: 1 zł
Exhibitions are open every day within 10.00 am – 6.00 pm.

Caucasus – frontier and community // Justyna Mielnikiewicz

Historical, cultural and ethnic diversity of the South Caucasus became a mail plot in photographic narratives of Justyna Mielnikiewicz, who – with passion – tells about a complicated world of the region that mingles with the fate of individuals.
In a series of black-and-white photographes we observe an everyday life of Caucasus influeced by the conflicts that recently died down. Whereas, also presented, colored pictures are a beginning of a new, launched in 2010, cycle that shows women of the Central Europe and former USSR. Its first part was realised in Georgia and aims to answer a question: how (and weather) have modernity and the Western culture influenced life of Georgian women.

Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Freelance photojournalist from Poland. Based in the Republic of Georgia, mainly covers the countries of the former Soviet Union. Regularly cooperates with The New York Times, Newsweek Poland and Eurasianet.org. Additionally, works have been published in various news publications: Monocle, Russian Reporter, Ogoniok, NG Travel, Le Monde among others.
Started her work as a photojournalist in 1999 as a reporter for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2002, became freelance and moved to Georgia, where started to work on her long-term project about the South Caucasus.
The project was awarded second prize in the Santa Fe Center for Visual Arts Project and got an honourable mention from the Dorotea Lange/ Robert Taylor Prize in 2003. The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts bought her works for their museum collection. Recent publication of her work came in the German yearbook of Reporters without Borders.In 2009 received Second Prize in World Press Photo Competition -for Coverage of War in South Ossetia.
Source: www.justmiel.com

 

Port of call // Agnieszka Rayss
 

A story about an illegal stay of Georgian 38-year-old woman, Tamriko, in Poland.

Agnieszka Rayss
Freelance photographer based in Warsaw. She studied Fine Arts History at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the Sorbonne in Paris before switching to photography. She is interested in documenting the influence of western pop culture, as well as gender issues and sports in young democracies. Her work has been exhibited the Noorderlicht Photofestival and the Prague Biennale. She was a Hasselbad Masters Award finalist in 2009. Co-founder of Sputnik Photos International Association of Photojournalists Collective.
At present she’s working on a project called „American Dream” that tells about the triumph of popculture in the countries of Central Europe, that should meterialize in a photo album.