The National Museum in Warsaw

Curator of the exhibition: Małgorzata Plater-Zyberk

Jan Bułhak (1876–1950) – art photographer, art theoretician, teacher and organizer of photographic life in Poland – ranks among the most outstanding artists of the 20th century. His artistic path takes its origins in the family manor house in Peresieka near Minsk Litewski [Lithuanian Minsk], where he took up photography in 1905, through Vilnius, where he lived and worked from 1912 to 1944, to Warsaw, where he arrived in July 1945. He photographed all around Poland and before the outbreak of the Second World War he created a series entitled Poland in Photographs by Jan Bułhak, and after the war he made another “sightseeing collection” Poland in Photograms by Jan Bułhak and Son.

Jan Bułhak, the most eminent Polish pictoralist made his debut in 1908, already in 1910 his photographs were published in Photographische Mitteilungen and in 1911 he was presented awards at international photographic competitions in Brussels and Antwerp. Bułhak’s earliest  photographs are landscapes from the surroundings of Minsk and Nowogródek, romantic studies of women’s figures in landscapes, views of manor houses of his family and friends, among them Bohdanowo, the property of Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936). The friendship between Bułhak and Ruszczyc, and most of all the intellectual support the painter offered the photographer, constituted for Bułhak, along with inspirations by aesthetics theories by the Frenchman E. J. Constant Puyo (1857–1933), the basis of his artistic work.

In 1912 Jan Bułhak started to take photographs for the Municipality of Vilnius, creating a priceless portrait of the architecture, urbanism and the nature of this unique place. He managed to render the beauty and exceptional ambiance of Vilnius, which stem from its geographic position and multicultural character. In Poland, reconstructed after the First World War, he made many series of photographs taken all around the country, such as Vilnius and its surroundings and Warsaw, Krakow, Lvov, Lublin, Poznań, Pomerania, Polish Baltic Sea and Danzig. Among photographs of architectural monuments a place was always left for a landscape depicting a wayside cross, a chapel or a mill, for studies of flowers and clouds.

Jan Bułhak was also a portraitist and a press photographer. At the borderline of these two genres one can place the series entitled Traditional Kitchens of Vilnius, full of expressive portraits of children, women and old men photographed in the wartime year of 1915, so difficult for the population of Vilnius. Bułhak left precious documentations of such events as: the opening of the Stefan Batory Univerity in Vilnius in 1919, the restoration of the painting of the Ostrobramska Mother of God in 1927, or the discovery of royal tombs in the Vilnius Cathedral vault on September 21, 1931. A lot of these photographs were published in illustrated magazines, guides, books and on cards, because Bułhak voluntarily collaborated with editors in order to make the photographed images of Poland public. He propagated the idea of national photography which was aimed at illustrating the national heritage by combining in a photograph both beauty and knowledge.   

Apart from his artistic activity, documented with his heritage of thousands of photographs and his participation in hundreds of national and international exhibitions, Bułhak also formulated his own theoretical views on artistic photography. His theories were published in several articles and books, among which the most important are: Photography. An Outline of Art Photography (1931) and Aesthetics of Light. The Principles of Photography (1936), illustrated with the author’s photographs.   

The artist also dedicated himself to teaching and to creating and integrating the photographers’ milieu. Since 1919 he taught in the Artistic Photography Section, which existed at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius till the outbreak of the war in 1939.

During the dramatic year of 1920 Bułhak stayed in Warsaw. It was then that he created series of photographs of the capital whose beauty and the manner of seeing the Baroque architecture or the forgotten backstreets recalls the artist’s earlier photographs of Vilnius. In the same year, the National Museum in Warsaw for the first time bought from Jan Bułhak his photographs of Warsaw.

In 1927 Bułhak founded the Vilnius Photoclub (Fotoklub Wileński), in 1930 the Polish Photoclub (Fotoklub Polski), and in 1946 together with Leonard Sempoliński he undertook actions aimed at founding the Society of Polish Photographers (now the Society of Polish Art Photographers) and the Polish Photographic Society. W 1946, as the first art photographer, he presented at the National Museum in Warsaw his own exposition entitled Ruins of Warsaw. 

The collection of the National Museum in Warsaw houses about one thousand photographs by Jan Bułhak and precious albums composed by the artist who, thanks to his outstanding activity, influenced the most Polish photography of the first half of the 20th century. His photographs are characteristic for the pictorial approach with their meticulous composition conforming to the rules of plastic arts, harmony of chiaroscuro, graduation of plans and values, softness of drawing. Numerous of the master’s less known photographs testify that he was also well aquatinted with the principles of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), whose theory he polemicized with, but in practice, as can be seen, did not reject it totally. The artist’s great merit was to strengthen the position of photography as an artistic domain and introducing it for good into national culture.

translated by Anna Kiełczewska

In 2007–2008 the exposition will be presented in the following national and foreign museums:

March – April 2007
The National Museum in Wrocław
May – June 2007
The Lithuanian Museum of Fine Arts in Vilnius
July – August 2007
The M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Fine Arts in Kaunas
October – November 2007
The Museum of Art in Łódź
May 2008
The Museum of the History of Photography in Krakow

At the organization of the exhibition cooperated and loaned theirs collections the following institutions and individuals

The National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa)
The Museum of the History of Photography in Krakow
The National Museum in Wrocław
The National Museum in Łódź
Jan Bułhak family
Ferdynand Ruszczyc family
The University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań
The Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
The Ossolinski National Institute in Wrocław (Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich we Wrocławiu)
The Wawel Royal Castle
The Society of Polish Art Photographers (Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików)

Lietuvos Dailes Muziejus, Vilnius / Litewskie Muzeum Sztuk Pięknych w Wilnie, Litwa / The Lithuanian Museum of Fine Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania
Nacionalinis M.K. Čiurlionio Dailés Muziejus, Kaunas, Lietuva / Narodowe Muzeum Sztuk Pięknych M.K. Čiurlionisa w Kownie, Litwa / M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Fine Arts in Kaunas, Lithuania
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek / Państwowe Muzea w Berlinie, Biblioteka Dzieł Sztuki, RFN / The National Museums in Berlin, Library of Works of Art, German Federal Republic
Vilniaus Dailés Akademija, Vilnius, Lietuva / Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Wilnie, Litwa / The Academy of Fine Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania