14.02.2020
IFF Editions #04 | Zosia Promińska
Date of premiere: 14.02.2020 (Friday) | 7 PM – 9:00 PM
Address: IFF Gallery, Racławicka St 99, Fort Mokotów, building 6
Reservations: biuro@instytutfotografiifort.org.pl
The next IFF edition - Agata 16 comes from the "Waiting room" series. Premiere of this edition will be during the opening of Zosia Promińska's exhibition, to which we cordially invite you.
IFF edition will be available for purchase in our IFF Gallery store and online store.
The photograph titled ‘Agata, aged 16 is one of the photographs making up the ‘Waiting Room’, which is a collection of more than 100 staged photographs with male and female models at the cusp of adolescence. The scale of the project is impressive – comparably to the scope of Zofia Rydet’s ‘Sociological Record’ – there are hundreds of images that shift what we imagine to be personal and individual into an extensive fresco of substantial proportions.
These portraits have been painstakingly arranged within the frame of a spacious room. The subjects pose among objects and details that reflect their adolescent reality, along with hints of lingering childhood in the form of plush toys, dolls, posters. They are dressed in garments from the collections of top Polish designers. A recognisable aspect of these shots is their characteristic surrealism, built upon the contrast between two opposing realities.
The photographer behind these images met with her models again several years after these pictures were taken in order to get an idea of how their careers evolved and how it was impacted by such early access to the world of fashion. Having been a model herself, she serves as the perfect witness of how the industry often exploits young people.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
ZOSIA PROMIŃSKA – visual artist and photographer. Winner of ShowOFF 2019 during the Photography Month Festival in Krakow. She was also nominated to the ReGeneration5 at the Museé l’Elysée. She studied ethnolinguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She lives and works in Switzerland and Portugal. For nearly 16 years, she worked as a model, starting from the age of 15. In her debut project, titled ‘Waiting Room’, she explores topics related to social pressure exerted on the individual and the way beauty is framed, portrayed and critiqued. The publisher Kehrer Verlag is set to publish ‘Waiting Room’ in the autumn of 2020. Her works have previously been published in top fashion magazines such as Vogue, i-D, Harper’s Bazaar and L’Official.