The Irreversible [Nieodwracalne] exhibition consists of portraits of the German-run Nazi camps survivors. This is a record of face-to-face meetings with the protagonists’ experiences, thoughts and feelings. The effect of more than 4 years of Agnieszka’s and Maciek’s Nabrdalik work will be shown in Leica Gallery Warszawa from November 9th.
Agnieszka and Maciek Nabrdalik started the project in 2009, after one of their visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Mueseum. At the gate they saw an obituary notice informing about the death of a former prisoner. Next day there was another one. At this moment they realized that they are the last generation who can approach the survivors to talk with them and asks questions. And so they did. They travelled over 80 000 kilometers to meet their interlocutors, recorded over 100 hours of material. The authors visited people of different nationalities, creeds, often very diverse . The Irreversible book featuring over forty portraits and interviews was published in September 2013. On November 9th the project will appear as an exhibition for the first time in Poland.
The survivors featured in the portrait series The Irreversible often say that in the camp one could forget one’s name, but not the number, which provided a new subhuman identity stripped of all spirituality. The style of these portraits denies the impersonal tone of the Nazi statistics. The striking namelessness of the victims, the numbers recurring in historical reports, and the ongoing debates about how many people really died take away all individuality from the prisoners. This project aims to restore their faces and show a little piece of what they managed to salvage in spite of the cruelty and the humiliation.
The photographs were taken in the survivors’ homes during intimate conversations when they were affected by strong emotions evoked by their memories. Looking at these photographs, one might sense that they have returned to those dark places.
The accounts of the prisoners serve as the commentary to the photographs. They don’t resemble historical accounts from the camps, but instead are reflections from the present. After so many years, the prisoners are trying to understand the reasons behind their own survival and the answer to the question “Why me?” is not always possible to find. They all come to one conclusion – those events left in them an indelible trace and each survivor must individually work through his or her trauma.
The Irreversible, Agnieszka and Maciek Nabrdalik
The exhibition organized by the Press Club Poland and co-financed by the Polish National Centre for Culture.
November 9th – December 5th, Leica Gallery Warszawa, Mysia 3 street
Opening of the exhibition: November 9th.
From 2 p.m. until 8 p.m. that day Maciek and Agnieszka will be present in the gallery to talk to the audience, sign their book and answer to any questions concerning the project.
Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Sunday 12 p.m.-6 p.m
Agnieszka Nabrdalik
She graduated in Philosophy and Sociology from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. After moving to Warsaw, she began working as a journalist for daily and weekly press, readily contributing reportage from Poland and other countries of the Eastern Bloc.
She began working as a freelance writer a year ago. The project on the concentration camp survivors turned out to be her vocation. “It is a subject that absorbed me completely. As long as it continues, it is difficult to say what will happen next. For me, it could go on forever. Unfortunately, its participants are passing away and now our main task is not to come too late.”
Maciek Nabrdalik is an award-winning photographer, member of the VII Photo agency.
Nabrdalik is based in Warsaw, Poland. His main concentration is on sociological changes in Eastern Europe. His photographs were published by Smithsonian Magazine, L’Espresso, Stern, Newsweek (Poland), Polityka, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal among others and exhibited in US, Mexico, France, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Greece and Poland.
In 2012 he was awarded with a grant from Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to continue his project on Nazi camps survivors worldwide.
www.nabrdalik.com, www.viiphoto.com
