A mysterious place, a gateway to an unknown hermetic world – the world that we know from stories and memories of mine workers, rare photographs and old engravings. This is what a mine can be for many. Although today some mines are adapted for tourist purposes, while visiting them we will not see a reliable representation of the original conditions that used to prevail in them.

Photography as a tool of documentation and creation is ideally suited to illustrate this transformation.

By creating this exhibition, we decided to bring you closer to the previous incarnation of the place where we stay every day. We would like to show the former “Katowice” mine, in the buildings of which the Silesian Museum (Muzeum Śląskie) is based today. For this purpose, we have selected photographs from our collection – taken in different historical periods by different authors and showing the mine in different contexts. We would like to show you the transformation that took place here at the turn of the decades and is still underway.

At the exhibition you will see, among others, interesting photographs taken underground by Max Steckel, documentary and reporter images recorded, among others, on behalf of the press by Stanisław Gadomski and Stanisław Jakubowski, as well as artistic shots taken by Halina Holas-Idziakowa and Leonard Idziak, the duo of excellent artists, members of the Association of Polish Art Photographers.

15.10.2021 – 05.12.2021

Curators: Agata Picheń-Kowalska, Kamil Myszkowski

The Silesian Museum in Katowice, 1 T. Dobrowolskiego St.

The exhibition „Mine in the lens” is part of the cultural offer accompanying the project „Reconstruction and adaptation of the historic building of the former Gwarek bathhouse into the warehouse studio of the Silesian Museum in Katowice” co-financed by the „Culture” Program of the European Economic Area (EEA) Financial Mechanism 2014–2021.

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