Magda Hueckel, Findyourgoddess, from the series Nudes, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Jednostka Gallery
The Technique of Nude Photography is a two-volume photography manual published in London in the 1950s. Inside, you will find photographs of women, accompanied by instructions on how to photograph them and numerous comments on the assets and “defects” of very similar, standardised bodies. The book is yet another example of the fetishising, paternalistic and patriarchal male gaze in the visual arts.
In an act of rebellion, the artist cut up the publication and used the remaining fragments to create new images, according to her own canon of beauty based on myths and indigenous beliefs. In her collages, the division into genders and genres disappears, replaced with a glorification of freedom and power, and a search for the repressed, the devalued, the forbidden. Naked is a premiere presentation of collages and spatial installations by Magda Hueckel, a versatile artist and activist who combines her experience in photography, theatre and film in her work.
The installation included in the exhibition was made in collaboration with the Archaeology of Photography Foundation.
The project was made as a part of an art grant from the City of Warsaw.
Curator: Katarzyna Sagatowska
Partners: QPrint, Jednostka Gallery
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Magda Hueckel – visual artist, screenwriter, filmmaker, theatre photographer. Her works have been exhibited in more than 40 individual and over 60 collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad (including Tate Britain in London, Circulation in Paris, Unseen Amsterdam, Vienna Art Fair, Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin).
When it comes to film, she collaborates with Tomasz Śliwiński. Their documentary Our Curse received an Oscar nomination, and the web series Plague Chronicles won the main prize in the DIG IT competition for the best theatre activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Magda Hueckel is the author of photo documentation of several hundred theatre performances as well as photography books: Anima. Images from Africa 2005-2013 and HUECKEL/THEATER, nominated for the Photographic Publication of the Year Award 2014 and 2016. She is also the CEO and founder of Polish CCHS Foundation “Lift the curse”, winner of the EURORDIS Black Pearl Award 2020.
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Łódzkie Towarzystwo Fotograficzne – Galeria Fotografii im. Eugeniusza Hanemana (Łódź Photographic Society – the Eugeniusz Haneman Photo Gallery), Piotrkowska 102
DID YOU KNOW THAT at Piotrkowska 102, there was a wholesale store with dyes and colonial goods?
Moreover, under the same address there was a woollen scarves factory, a money exchange office, a press advertisement office, a stockings manufacture, a dye and paint store, and a furniture factory! Since 1996, it has been the address of the famous Łódź Kaliska pub, a place created by a group of alternative artists known by the same name. It is a really iconic place in Łódź! Piotrkowska 102 also houses the Photographic Society of Łódź (ŁTF), established in 1949. To this day, the ŁTF has held over 500 photo exhibitions displaying the works of photographers from all over the world. The Society’s patron is Eugeniusz Haneman, who documented, among other things, the Warsaw Rising.
