“Art schools play two roles, which are often very
difficult to reconcile. They are transmitters of
tradition, and, simultaneously, show ways and
methods to transgress it. What is necessary in
order to maintain contact with the present, is a
creative, adaptive attitude to the past,” writes Piotr
Wolynski in Kwartalnik Fotografia. The quote,
which comes from an artist and lecturer in the
Department of Photography at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Poznan touches upon a question of
paramount importance for artistic education. On
the one hand, it underlines the awareness of and
familiarity with tradition; on the other, the author
draws attention to the possibility of transgression.
In other words, crossing certain boundaries
cannot take place without detailed study. It is
worth noting that the said transgression is inextricably
bound to gaining artistic autonomy. The
moment of presenting the diploma work, which
reveals the artist’s already established or still
developing credo, can be deemed a symbolic
threshold in this peculiar process of acquiring
maturity.
The common element of the presented projects
is the creators’ education on visual arts. All of
them are visual artists who graduated recently
from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and
they cover a broad range of contemporary photographic
language.

Dorota Luczak