We are fortunate to have had Zbyszko Siemaszko, a tireless photojournalist, documenting Warsaw during the 1950s and 60s for Stolica weekly and chronicling the city’s rebuilding process for various state institutions. His high-quality cameras and choice of subjects and composition evoke a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era.

In 2016, the Dom Spotkanie Historia (History Meeting House) held an outdoor exhibition and published an album titled *Dream of a City*, featuring Siemaszko’s architectural and urban planning photographs, mostly taken from above or from a distance. The current exhibition, “Zbyszko Siemaszko: Warsaw’s Photographer” presents 200 of his photographs from the 1950s and 60s, along with several hundred slides and selected Stolica covers. It is the first exhibition to offer such a comprehensive cross-section of his work, sourced from the National Digital Archives and the FORUM Polish Photography Agency and includes news photos, street scenes, neighborhood moments, and domestic interiors—offering a more comprehensive view of everyday life during that era. Jerzy S. Majewski, a respected authority on Warsaw’s history, provides commentary to give context to the images.

The exhibition begins with oversized photographs that transport you to the Warsaw cityscape from seventy years ago. You start to notice the small traces that still remain in today’s Warsaw. As you progress through the exhibit, you experience the feel of a magazine, similar to the ones Siemaszko used to work for. One room, in complete darkness, showcases illuminated images, resembling glowing jewels in the night sky, illustrating Siemaszko’s views of neon lights and street scenes from the rooftops.

The curation of the exhibition brings to mind Henri Cartier-Bresson’s quote: “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.” The focus isn’t solely on the buildings and cityscape, but also on the workers and people on the streets that fascinated Siemaszko. He captures moments like lovers entwined on dishevelled blankets along the Wisła River, people sheltering from the rain, and those catching a free ride on the back bumper of a bus.

A striking section of the exhibition is the series of photos resembling movie stills, depicting people turning the corner at Nowy Świat and Jerozolimskie Street. This display concept is reminiscent of American fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s work, showcasing people walking in style on the streets of New York.

Another Cartier-Bresson quote seems fitting for a photo showing a young woman running to catch a bus, just as her foot is about to land in a puddle: “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”

The exhibition also includes remarkable photographs of the freshly constructed train stations in central Warsaw, which could easily be mistaken for modern photos due to their luxurious and slightly eerie zeitgeist—an architectural style that many contemporary photographers aim to capture.

As the curators of the exhibition, Katarzyna Madoń-Mitzner and Krzysztof Wójcik, aptly put it, “not only can Siemaszko be seen as post-war Warsaw’s ‘chronicler,’ but he is also a true artist of documentary urban photography.”.

Zbyszko Siemaszko.  Photographer of Warsaw at Dom Spotkań z Historią

Karowa 20,

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