The Sound of Two Songs. Photographs by Mark Power

The latest edition of Photomonth in Krakow is a chance to organise the world premiere of an exhibition summing up a several-year project by Mark Power – an outstanding British photographer, and a member of the prestigious Magnum Photos agency. Also active as a curator, Power oversaw the Theatres of War exhibition in Krakow’s Schindler Factory in 2007. He has been travelling around Poland since 2004, taking its photographic portrait. His photos are topographic by nature – the photographer concentrates on places that strike him as interesting in a particular way, and which, from his perspective, represented the Polish  landscape. He took pictures of a strange and ambiguous construction on the Baltic shore, a gigantic advertisement dominating an urban street, and forest side streets with a woman selling the mushrooms and berries she’s collected.
The project was finished just last year, and has yet to be shown to the public – it will be presented at the International Cultural Centre, and accompanied by the publication of an album. This remarkable photographer’s interest in Polish reality, which he inevitably perceives from his own, distanced perspective, gives Poland a chance to be located in the European ‘visual consciousness’, and to return onto the map of contemporary documentary photography.

Mark Power graduated in painting and turned to photography somewhat by accident. He has worked on long-term photography projects since 1992, observing the changes underway in traditionally industrial regions. He is presently an academic lecturer at Brighton University. To date he has published four monographic albums: The Shipping Forecast (1996), Superstructure (2000), The Treasury Project (2002), and 26 Different Endings (2007). Alongside the Sound of Two Songs project he made the A – 380 series, portraits of the largest passenger aeroplane in existence.

The Sound of Two Songs. Photographs by Mark Power
Coordinator: Piotr Lelek

Grand opening: 8.05.2010, 6:00 p.m.
International Cultural Centre, 25 Main Square
Exhibition dates: 7.05–27.06.2010; TUE-SUN: 10:00a.m.-6:00p.m.