He always traveled with a camera, ever ready to press the shutter release. He took his first photographs more than 70 years ago with a borrowed Leica. Since then, he has shot more than 500 Przekrój weekly covers, photographed more than 800 theater performances, and collected thousands of photographs in his personal archive.

But what we find most important in Plewiński’s approach cannot be quantified. His achievements as a photographer are intertwined with his colorful life story and personality: an unwavering curiosity about people and the world and a continuous desire to experience new things.

While he spent decades working at Kraków’s Przekrój magazine and with some of the most important theaters in Poland, his photography wasn’t limited to commissioned assignments. He traveled, camera in hand, around Poland and Europe, and photographed his friends and acquaintances, many of whom were leading figures in Poland’s cultural and artistic life. Some of those photos were “for work,” while others came about as spontaneous results of his ability to observe. He often says that he “did more than was required.” He usually returned from assignments with more photographs than the editors asked for.

The documentary photographs we have selected for the Posed, Candid exhibition reflect Plewiński’s approach to his work as an alert, sensitive, and formalistically disciplined observer of people. His contact sheets demonstrate impressively precise framing and patience.

As he entered the profession in the second half of the 1950s, Plewiński sketched a moving portrait of post-war Poland: the ruined Western Territories returning to life and the disappearing traces of the past of the Sklepiki [Small Stores] series. He also photographed the emerging workers’ and peasants’ communist Poland in the Nowa Huta series and in commissioned reportages from the Radoskór shoe factory and the Huta Katowice steel mill. The SAM-y series shows how Poles in the 1950s attempted to make their dreams of owning a car a reality. The fruits of decades of trips to the Biebrza River valley can be seen in his photos of the lives of the residents of Olszowa Droga village. He has continued working on the Zauważone [Spotted] series since the 1960s. Portraits of artists and intellectuals, as well as theatre photography, make up much of the exhibition. Plewiński worked with some of the most important Polish playhouses, using a traditional camera (with negatives and no flash) to preserve the performances’ atmosphere and the plasticity of the image.

Plewiński’s oeuvre eludes simple definitions, even if parts of it can be assigned to various categories, including reportage, portrait, theater, fashion and street photography. But all of it is characterized by lightness, a sense of humor, and an unexpected point of view. Most of all, his work is marked by a deep interest in people—their emotions and the world they create.