Little owls on t-shirts – charity
What kind of owls are these? Little owls. Where do they come from? From the Fortepan archive and the collections of Orientarium ZOO Łódź. What are they doing on the T-shirts? They’re collecting funds for the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds (OTOP).
If you didn’t have time to visit us during Fotofestiwal – contact us via email (info@fotofestiwal.com) or social media to buy 100% organic cotton t-shirts with the little owls from Łódź ZOO Orientarium. Few pieces of this limited edition (120 p) are still left to buy and we can sent it to you. The entire revenue will be transferred to charity. Together with the Un/bearable Lightness of Being exhibition, this event is the culmination of the entire year of our work on the Fortepan project.
The Fortepan archive was started a long time ago in Budapest. It was inspired by a shopping bag filled with anonymous photographs which was found in a dumpster. Nowadays, Fortepan is an international project comprising over 180 thousand photos, all taken before 1990. These are photographs from private collections, as well as from the archives of various institutions from all around Europe. All of them are available for free on www.fortepan.eu. Last year, Fotofestiwal joined the action of expanding the archive. Institutions and individuals from Łódź who were willing to share their collections were also invited. Thanks to that, the international database will be extended to include photos from, e.g. the archives of Veolia Łódź, Radio Żak or Orientarium ZOO Łódź, as well as family photographs of Łódź citizens gathered during the seniors’ meetings in the Urban Activity Factory (Fabryka Aktywności Miejskiej). Mind you, photos taken before 1990 may still be sent to: archiwum@fotofestiwal.com or brought to the Urban Activity Factory.
Selected photos from Łódź and from the international database will be presented in the Un/bearable Lightness of being exhibition, which will be opened on 17 June at 19:00 in Poleski Ośrodek Sztuki, as a part of Fotofestiwal. We’ve decided to focus mostly on the moments which show joy, happiness, love, friendship and the beauty of spending time together. They became immortalised in family albums, often showing more authentic, spontaneous and uncovered emotions than professional photography does. The
exhibition will also include photos from the exceptional archives of Veolia Łódź, which present the history of our city. As we were also invited to browse through the archives of Orientarium ZOO Łódź, we will show you the images of its inhabitants, which ended up on the T-shirts and will easily melt your heart.
This year, in our centre, you can also buy hats, bags and iron-on patches branded with this year’s slogan: HOPE. Join us at no.3 Tymienieckiego Street!
