The exhibition is part of the European Month of Photography Berlin.

Berlin 1968/69, a house on Gartenstraße 26, with a view of the Berlin Wall and West Berlin.
A five-year-old boy from Poland playing among last surviving houses of the old Berlin.
The Café Warschau in Karl-Marx-Allee, where his parents worked and where they served ice cream which impressed his German friends.

These are the first childhood memories of the photographer Wojtek Wieteska, stored in his memory in a series of black and white photographs. Wieteska draws on these memories and analyses how these few images contain various elements of his artistic sensibility. The aim is to reconstruct the aforementioned memories with the help of the media of photography, video and sound, which reflect the development of the artist’s interests. At the same time, Wieteska poses a question about the role of memories and their imagery in shaping personality, creativity and artistic creation.

Wojtek Wieteska is one of the most recognizable Polish photographers. He studied at The Film School in Lodz, where he earned the PhD in the field of photography in 2015. As a photographer and creator, Wojtek Wieteska grew out of the French humanist school of photography and, over the years, has developed an individual style with a distinctive conceptual approach to reality. Although the majority of his projects reveal around worldwide subjects, he stays aware of his European roots – in his own words: “they are his base, his gravity, the inspiration that keeps on giving”. He expressed and explored it to the fullest in the “I am from Poland” series, which covers a period of 28 years (1986-2013) and is a sum of his identity of being Polish. Among his many group and solo exhibitions, the most recent are: „Travelling“ in Leica Gallery in Warsaw in 2017, „Lola van der W.“, Bimer / Space in Warsaw in 2019 and the spectacular „Paradise 101“ in Museum of Japanese Art and Technology “Manggha” in Cracow.

Wojciech Wieteska is currently dividing his time between Warsaw and New York City, where he is working on a documentary film about the city and its residents.

Performance/ Meet the artist
Wojtek Wieteska will be present in the gallery on first Friday, Saturday and Sunday, living in his reconstructed childhood room, waiting for your visit and questions.

Opening hours during “Meet the artist” performance:
Friday 14:00 – 19:00
Saturday 12:00 – 18:00
Sunday 12:00 – 15:00

Free entry

Info: instytutpolski.pl/berlin, https://emop-berlin.eu

Organizer: Polish Institute Berlin

The artist is supported by: Fujifilm, Eizo, Fundacja Przekrój