One of Europe's leading photographic artists, Wojciech Prazmowski was born in 1949, in Czestochowa, Poland. He studied photography in Brno, Czechoslovakia from 1972 to 1974. He began his career as an independent artist and a Member of the Union of Polish Art Photographers. He is a lecturer at the Higher Photographic School of the State Film, Theatre and Television Academy in Lodz, Poland.
Mr. Prazmowski employs a traditional silver bromide technique of printing but often treats his prints with sepia toner to make them look like archival or historical images. The main theme of his work is the search for symbolic situations of the past, using scenes from everyday life. The sources of his inspiration are old amateur photographs found in nooks and corners of his family archives that reflect the pre-Communist, pre-World War II aristocracy of Poland. He makes collages of these materials using fragments of old pictures, sometimes adding new graphic or painted elements. The principal series of this period of this work is the Family Album which reflects the underlying values and techniques found in his work.
Wojciech Prazmowski has participated in over 100 group and individual exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Exhibitions include the First Biennale of Photographic Art in Schlezwig, Germany; Centre de la Photographie, Pas-de-Calais, France; Galleri Image in Aarhus, Denmark; the 10th Month of Photography in Bratislava, Slovakia, and a solo exhibition at FotoFest 1992, Houston. His works can be found in many private and public collections: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum in Warsaw; Art Museum, Lodz, Poland; Striped House Museum of Art, Tokyo, and the Centre for the Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Palace, Warsaw to name a few. He has published several books, among them L'ange brisé (1994) in France. He lives in Czestochowa, Poland.
