Jacenty Dędek

Portrait of the Proviences

Portrait of the Proviences is a cross-sectional documentary project devoted to small-town Poland. The work on collecting materials lasted a total of over six and a half years, between January 2011 and mid-2017, all over Poland, in all provinces, in towns no larger than 30 thousand inhabitants. We visited (together with my wife Katarzyna) several hundred cities and villages, the photos were taken in 421 towns. We tried to create a multi-layered story about people living in small cities, towns, villages. Despite moving around local areas, we wanted to talk about universal issues, ones that can concern each of us. Social topics, interpersonal relations, life's inconveniences, things that bother us were important to us and although they concern our specific heroes, by name and surname, they are known to everyone. We wanted to tell about how people living there see themselves, their opportunities and the future in places that are not necessarily reached by newly built roads. We were very interested in the kind of split between the old and the new. We had a strange feeling that something had already ended, or was ending before our eyes, and that something new had not really begun. That the province was in a strange limbo. A large documentary project was created, recording the changes taking place in small towns in the Polish province. This is a story about us, about Poland, which is changing before our eyes.

www.portretprowincji.pl

Jacenty Dędek

Jacenty Dędek, photographer. He deals with portraits and documentary photography. Three-time scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. He is most interested in ordinary things, happening on the margins of major events, but always close to people. Author of the book "portretprowincji.pl", which is the result of almost seven years of travel around small-town Poland. Together with his wife Katarzyna, he visited several hundred towns with less than 30 thousand inhabitants, in all provinces.

www.jacentydedek.pl

Exhibition Availability

Gallery of the Bialystok Puppet Theatre, K. Kalinowskiego St. 1, open 17.09 – 03.10.2024; Tues.-Wed. 8:00 – 12:00, Thurs.-Fri. 8:00 – 12:00 and 15:30 – 19:00, Sat. 15:30 – 19:00 and one hour before before the performance. Sunday: one hour one hour before the performance. Free admission.