Rozważania podjęte przez autorki tekstów zamieszczonych w niniejszym numerze „Przeglądu Kulturoznawczego” dotyczą różnorodnych zagadnień związanych z obecnością kobiet w kulturze wizualnej Galicji – fotograficznej i filmowej – zarówno jako jej kreatorek, jak i odbiorczyń. Wybór obszaru dawnego zaboru austriackiego podyktowany jest chęcią podjęcia lokalnych badań, ograniczonych do historycznego (i mitycznego) terenu o wyrazistej, choć niejednorodnej, tożsamości kulturowej wynikającej z politycznych, ekonomicznych, społecznych, ale i kulturowych uwarunkowań

Matching the ever-increasing numbers of female participants in the commercial venues of department stores and cinemas in the 1920s, modernist women writers enjoyed a new visibility in the intellectual world of cinema journalism. Yet cinema modernism, like literary modernism, was veined by masculinity in the 1920s. The paper argues that modernist women writers, including Colette, H.D., Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf, created a feminist standpoint. By replacing the prescriptive male gaze with a feminist aesthetics: identifying with stars and women viewers and by describing audiences as socially constituted and gendered.
 

Home Photography of Women – between Document and Private Artistic Experiment

The text focuses on photographs taken by Klementyna Zubrzycka at the beginning of 20th century, at her home town Limanowa. It is interesting to examine these pictures in the context of both home life and family life, because the author – Zubrzycka mostly documented her everyday life and relatives, like others amateurs in the first half of 20th century, including Lartigue or Vivian Maier (who was popularized by a documentary film made in 2013). Analyzing photographs of Zubrzycka, it is necessary to check to what extend home (and family) photography was considered to be domain of women. And if emancipation and modernity opened a new filed of creativity for women. The other issue is to examine these pictures in terms of aesthetics and artistic values, usually re-discovered by critics and curators years after they were made. The last but not least question would be one about differences between amateur photography and arts.

 

Cinema in Memories of Women Viewers from Kraków. Oral History as a Methodology of Cinema and Spectatorship

The main issue of the text is to examine several different methods of studies of women as spectators. The most accurate methodology seems to be a paradigm of oral history, combining methods of history, ethnological studies and sociology. The idea of research on women’s spectatorship is based on interpersonal contacts and interviews with women who have either knowledge or experience of film culture. There were several interviews that had taken place before writing the article, and each of them was given by a women living in Kraków for years. The collected material provided an interesting approach to the history of women as viewers and participants of film culture.

 

Professional Women Photographers in Former Polish Galicia

The aim of the text is to present a short history of professional photography of women in former Polish Galicia, from the end of 19th century to the first half of 20th century. The text consists of three parts and each one addresses other aspect of women’s works as photographers. The first one is an introduction to the photography and the women’s issue. The second one examines photography as a new technology and a tool of emancipation. The third part combines biographies of selected women photographers who lived and worked in Galicia, and who despite of class and gender limitations, became owners or managers of photo studios. It is interesting to examine very diverse social and educational background of women photographers, who benefited the modern time and technology to became economically independent professional women.

 

Women from Galicia and the Polish Film Culture of 1920s and 1930s

The text examines forms of participation of women from Galicia (Kraków and Lwów) in Polish film culture that started to develop dynamically after 1918. There were several different occupations for women who tried to work for the film industry, including being actresses, owners or managers of cinemas but also film critics. Moreover, the early decades of 20th century was the time of emerging of women’s spectatorship, and film popular culture – commercialized and popularized by yellow press and film magazines.
Closer examination of biographies of Zofia Batycka from Lwów and Maria Malicka from Kraków provides documents and visual materials, illustrating development of Polish star system and on the other hand of women’s professional experience. Other interesting sources of information about women and early cinema in Poland are film critics wrote by women who as Stefania Zahorska or Magdalena Samozwaniec were modern, independent women, educated and open-minded. Their memories and essays can be considered both as a documentation of film history but also of women’s history (and women’s spectatorship).
 

„Muszę robić to, co zawsze chciałem robić: myśleć”

Z Didierem Eribonem rozmawia Wojciech Śmieja