The photographic archive The photographic archive left by Eustachy Kossakowski contains the results of forty five years of his professional work and creativity, first in Poland and then in France. It consists mainly of negatives, with approximately 140,000 images on them. One of the possible ways of classifying them would be to divide them as follows: - works, i.e. individual experiments in photography, [the series from Paris: 6 metres to Paris (1971); Palisades (1972-77); The hijacked posters (1975-79) and the series on light: Rome (1975); Pompeii (1980); Light in the corridor of the maids’ rooms (1984); The lights of Chartres (1983-90)]; - photographic reportages from Poland (the post-war rebuilding of Warsaw; the industry; the countryside; political events; cultural life); - documentation and joint projects with other artists: France between 1970 and 1980 Centre Création Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris exhibitions; events at independent galleries and at cutting edge galleries; the works and the portraits of progressive contemporary artists, such as Raymond Hains, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham..., and the theatrical performance of Jerzy Grotowski; Poland in the 1960s the happenings and theatrical shows by Tadeusz Kantor; the activities of the Foksal Gallery and the artists associated with it, for example Henryk Stażewski, Edward Krasiński, Włodzimierz Borowski; portraits of leading Polish actors. The archive as a tool for research There are two main reasons why Eustachy Kossakowski’s photographic archive is worthy of attention. Its artistic aspect reflects the progress of a photographer who over the years, influenced by the people he met, by various events and changes in the political and cultural context of his life, developed an autonomous and highly original language of his own. The archive’s documentary and historical aspect seen in the light of the new situation in Europe should provide a means to a better understanding of life as it used to be lived behind the Iron Curtain and to an increased awareness of how under the communist system the mechanisms of power allowed the governments to control entire nations. On the other hand, the archive records the consecutive stages of architectural and social transformation of France in the 1970s. Furthermore, it presents a lively and comprehensive panorama of artistic life and creativity in Poland and France over the past forty years. Association Eustachy Kossakowski Objectif/Subjectif (EKO) On the initiative of Anka Ptaszkowska-Kossakowska, one of the founders of the Foksal Gallery and Professor-Emeritus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Caen, in 2004 a group of Eustachy Kossakowski’s friends established the EKO Association. In addition to Anka Ptaszkowska, its members include: - Professor Philippe Sers - philosopher and art historian (Chairman of the EKO Association) - Adam Rzepka - photographer at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Treasurer of the EKO Association) - Pierre Brochet - publisher (Secretary of the EKO Association) - François Barré - consultant - Professor Arlette Barré - art historian - Jacques Bitoun - lawyer - Michel Claura - lawyer - Jacques Clerc-Renaud - publisher - Charles-François Duplain - artist - Patrick Komorowski - photography historian - Erik Veaux - translator. The aims of the EKO Association There are two main fields of the Association’s activities. First and foremost, it works on securing Eustachy Kossakowski’s photographic legacy, by providing state-of-the-art storage facilities for his negatives, ecta-chromes, original prints and contact sheets. Furthermore, it distributes as widely as possible and continuously promotes this unique collection of photographs of undoubted artistic and documentary merit. The EKO Association’s annual report for 2007 Promotional activities Since its foundation, the EKO Association has been working on achieving its aims. The first retrospective exhibition of Eustachy Kossakowski’s photographs was organised jointly with the Foundation EDF-Electra and the National Gallery of Art Zachęta and staged in Warsaw and then in Paris. Both exhibitions were accompanied by comprehensive catalogues and the galleries where the exhibitions were held acquired Kossakowski’s works for their collections. In 2005, the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône put on an exhibition of the first series of photographs produced by the artist after he had emigrated to France, 6 mètres avant Paris. 159 photos objectives…1971 and subsequently acquired the entire cycle. In May 2006, as part of an exhibition of the works of Edward Krasiński, organised by the Generali Foundation in Vienna and shown under the title Les Mises en scène, thirty photographs of the process of creating the installations in the 1960s were included in the exhibition. Twenty of them were bought by the Generali Foundation. Kossakowski’s photographs formed the bulk of illustrations in the exhibition’s extensive catalogue. In July 2006, the Departmental Henri Matisse Museum in Cateau-Cambrésis included four series of Kossakowski’s photographs, taken in Poland and France, in its show Les Avant-gardes polonaises. Dialogues historiques depuis Malévitch (The Avant-garde in Poland. Historic talks - Malevitch and after). An illustrated catalogue with the work of all the artists shown accompanied the exhibition. In 2006 the Carnavalet Museum with the aid of the City of Paris bought the famous series 6 mètres avant Paris. 159 photos objectives d‘Eustachy Kossakowski (6 metres to Paris. 159 objective photographs by Eustachy Kossakowski), thus enriching its collections with a cycle closely connected with the capital of France. Part of the series will be exhibited in 2008 in the Los Angeles Central Public Library in the show Beyond the iconic: contemporary photographs of Paris . There are plans to present the whole series at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris. In 2007, the Kandinsky Library, part of the Georges Pompidou Centre, acquired for its collection twenty one prints from Kossakowski’s documentation and records of joint projects with artists in Poland and France. For the first time ever, 105 photographs recording Tadeusz Kantor’s happenings could be seen by the public at the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona as part of its exhibition Un teatre sense teatre and then at the Berardo Foundation in Lisbon. The photomontages created by Eustachy Kossakowski in the early 1960s and based on the utopian architectural projects of Alina Ślesinśka, will be exhibited for the first time in forty years at an exhibition of her work staged at the National Gallery of Art Zachęta in Warsaw in its 2007-08 season. One of the accomplishments of 2007 at the EKO Association was the creation of a website presenting Eustachy Kossakowski’s work, with texts in Polish, French and English. Anka Ptaszkowska and the EKO – Eustachy Kossakowski Objectif/Subjectif Society - have the pleasure to inform you, that the Eustachy Kossakowski Photo Negative and Transparencies Archive has been donated to the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is an instutution in the making, widely supported by both the Polish artistic circles as a whole, as well as its leading representatives. Run by the Director Joanna Mytkowska, the Museum belongs to the tradition established in the early 30’s, when the Museum of Art in Lodz was created by the artists themselves – as a first institution of its kind in the world. The donation of the Eustachy Kossakowski’s Archive, made by Anka Ptaszkowska is a sort of accomplishment of their first engagments – Eustachy Kossakowski’s as a documentalist of the Polish artistic avant-garde of the 60’s and Anka Ptaszkowska’s as the co-funder of the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw. From now on, the activities of the EKO Society will develop in full collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in the fields of information, publicity, exhibitions and publishing. Eighteen original photo prints from Tadeusz Kantor’s performance „Where are the snows of yesteryear“ and 6 contemporary prints from photo reportages from the 50’s and 60’s can be seen at the exhibition „Art comes before gold“ at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, running till the 24th of January 2009. Conservation work Alongside promotional activities, the EKO Association is concentrating its efforts on safeguarding Kossakowski’s legacy by providing the optimum storage conditions for his work. With that aim in mind, it has purchased professional equipment of museum standards. So far, 80% of his negatives have been preserved, sorted out according to their subject and in chronological order and placed in suitable cases. Once that stage of the project is completed, the archive will be catalogued and the most valuable negatives scanned. Approximately 5% of them have already been scanned. Afterwards, they are going to be captioned and entered into the data basis, which will be accessible on the website. The cataloguing system has been worked out following the advice of Isabelle Wertel-Fournier, a lecturer at the University Paris VIII. Future projects The work on the archive will continue. New promotional actions will be undertaken with the use of the website. The project connected with the proposal to exhibit the full documentation of Tadeusz Kantor’s work at the Cricoteque, the Documentation Center of Tadeusz Kantor’s Art in Cracow, is under way. Progress has been made on three books devoted to the series of photographs taken by Kossakowski in Paris in the 1970s. Contact Association EKO c/o Anka Ptaszkowska 163 rue de Charenton - 75012 Paris Tél. : +33 (0)1 44 67 92 61 > associationeko@yahoo.fr Website conception www.gaelrolland.com