Ян Булгак. Паштоўка "Алея ў Саксонскім садзе" (Aleja w Ogrodzie Saskim); 1938. Калекцыя Музея Варшавы (fot. fot. A. Czechowski).
On September 4, Warsaw will host the fourth Night of Photography (Noc Fotografii 2026), organized by the Museum of Warsaw’s Photography Center. This year’s theme is “Taming the City” (Oswajanie miasta), a reflection on how migrants, artists and residents build their relationships with the metropolis. A distinct Belarusian presence can be seen in this year’s program and preparations for the festival — from members of the organizing team to names featured in the projections.
The event will begin at 7:15 p.m. with the official opening and the presentation of diplomas to the winners of the “Taming the City” competition. Immediately afterward, from 7:45 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., there will be a one-off exclusive premiere screening of the winners’ works. From 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., the main outdoor projections will take place at six different locations in the streets of the Old and New Town.
Two Belarusians are among the key names on the festival’s official team list.
The author of the “Square of Changes” project, Yauhen Atsietski, prepared the street projection montages for works by Polish photographers Rafał Milach and Zofia Rydet for the Night of Photography.
Director and graduate of the Belarusian Academy of Arts Ruzhana Kruchkova served as coordinator of the international “Taming the City” photography competition.
Interestingly, the projections edited by Yauhen Atsietski connect international art with the Belarusian context.
Rafał Milach is one of the best-known contemporary Polish photographers and a member of the prestigious international agency Magnum Photos. He is known to Belarusians for his photobook “The Winners” — an in-depth and reflective exploration of Belarusian ideology and the reality of the 2010s. Milach has also participated several times in the Month of Photography in Minsk.
At the Night of Photography, Milach’s project about a Vietnamese man named Lin, photographed in 2005 at the 10th-Anniversary Stadium, will be shown. During the massive fire on Marywilska Street in 2024, Lin lost everything, including a 20-year family photo archive. Milach’s old photographs from the “Ba Lan” project became the only tangible trace of his former life, which they are now trying to reconstruct together through memories.
Zofia Rydet is a classic of Polish photography whose “Sociological Record” (Zapis socjologiczny) project is regarded as a monumental anthropological archive. Beginning in 1978, when she was 67, she visited thousands of rural homes, photographing residents in their private interiors. A significant part of these photographs was taken in Podlasie, on the Belarusian-Polish borderlands. Alongside Polish religious images, her photographs often feature Orthodox icons decorated with embroidered Belarusian ritual towels known as “nabozhniki,” as well as authentic domestic settings identical to those found in villages of the Hrodna and Brest regions.
A particular highlight for Belarusian readers will be the “J&J Bułhak – 2 × Warszawa” projection, which will be shown in the arcade near the ZPAF galleries on Kanonia Street. The presentation was created and curated by photographer and documentary filmmaker Wojciech Walkiewicz.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jan Bułhak (1876–1950) and the 120th anniversary of the birth of his son Janusz (1906–1977). Jan Bułhak, a native of the Navahrudak region, was the “father” of East European landscape and local-history photography, coined the term “fotografika,” and was a founder of Pictorialism. His artistic and teaching legacy took shape in Minsk, Vilnius, Hrodna and Ashmiany, becoming a fundamental part of both Belarusian and Polish cultural heritage.
One detail makes his story particularly dramatic: in 1944, during the fighting in Vilnius, his studio was destroyed by fire, along with around 30,000 negatives — the entirety of his many years of work documenting Belarusian and Lithuanian landscapes. Having lost everything, the 69-year-old photographer and his son Janusz arrived amid the ruins of postwar Warsaw to start again from scratch.
At the Night of Photography, viewers will see a unique contrast between photographs used at the time to produce postcards: first, prewar Pictorialist landscapes and images bearing the credit “fot. Jan Bułhak,” followed by postwar postcards depicting the ruins of the city in 1945 and credited “fot. J. Bułhak i Syn.”
The program includes works from the Museum of Warsaw’s collections, as well as a special selection of projects from Les Rencontres d’Arles — the world’s oldest and most prestigious photography festival (the French equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival in the world of photography).
The accompanying program also includes meetings with Polish and international artists, workshops for children and adults, as well as the premiere of the album “Aleksander Minorski. Photography Is an Intervention” (Aleksander Minorski. Fotografia to interwencja).
Admission to all events and outdoor screenings is free. A detailed schedule is available on the Museum of Warsaw’s website.
The project is curated by Julia Staniszewska.
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