Edited by: Artur Tanikowski

Pages: 120

Publiher: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Publication accompanying the exhibition "Wojciech Wilczyk: (Nie)Widzialne / (In)Visible". The exhibition includes two photographic series by the artist: "There Is No Such Thing As an Innocent Eye" (2006 – 2008) and "The Holy War" (2009 – 2014).

Both series aim to document specific social phenomena and concern the presence of Jews in public space as well as the mentality of Poles. The photographs forming part of the cycle entitled There Is No Such Thing As an Innocent Eye portray the traces left by now-defunct Jewish communities in contemporary Poland – the buildings of former synagogues, batei midrash and houses of prayer which, after 1945, were converted into stores, fire stations, warehouses or, in the most fortunate cases, museums or libraries.

The Holy War series of photographs is quite different in this regard, depicting Jews as vilified, mythological figures that seem to haunt the imagination of graffiti artists. The clash of these two portrayals of Jews in our public spaces allows us to see the extremely varied forms of Jewish (non)existence in the Polish collective memory.