Artist Blog
Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.
1/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
2/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
3/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
4/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
5/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
6/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
7/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
8/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
9/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
10/10 Sociological Record © Zofia Rydet, courtesy of the Zofia Rydet Foundation
“Sociological Record” by Zofia Rydet
Dec 09, 2013 - Mateusz Sarello
Today I would like to introduce you to Zofia Rydet (1911-1997), one of the most outstanding Polish photographers, author of the monumental documentary series "Sociological record", which is her most important and largest (in terms of number of images) project, created from the year 1978 until almost the end of her activity in photography. Zofia Rydet wanted to capture the transient traditional image of the Polish countryside, including Suwalszczyzna, Podhale, Lubelszczyzna, Rzeszowszczyzna and Silesia, as well as changing cities (for example Krakow, Gdansk). "Sociological record" includes several dozen thousand negatives. Photographs in this series represent people in their home environment, in a way referring to the nineteenth-century "photographs of the factory ". Often compared to the portraits by August Sander, when he documented, in the 20s of the Twentieth Century, the faces of German society , as well as, because of focusing on backwardness and poverty - with the achievements of the American Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the '30s. Rydet’s photographs are characterized by, on the one hand, directness and simplicity of the approach, her personal relationship with the presented themes, naturalness and sincerity, and on the other - following the trail of modern art and inspiration of both, photographic pictorialism and fine arts; the Young Poland (Mloda Polska), abstraction and surrealism. The Zofia Rydet Foundation focuses on elaborating her immense archive (www.fundacjarydet.pl ) . In 2013, work began on the archiving and digitization of over 7,000 negatives. The effects of these activities are available in the online archive project at www.zofiarydet.com from December 2013.