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Zofia Rydet

Sociological Record

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Courtesy: Zofia Rydet Foundation

In 1978, when she was 67, Zofia Rydet undertook the ambitious task of photographing people’s lives in Poland. She did so with a systematic working method that consisted of photographing people in their homes, with wide frames that captured the maximum number of details. By 1990, she had collected a total of 20,000 negatives, almost all taken in very humble homes in villages and towns, revealing living conditions of which no trace would soon remain.

With this monumental sociological archive, Rydet belongs to the long tradition of photographic inventory, along with Eugène Atget and his record of Paris (1898-1927), August Sander and his seminal catalogue of human typologies of the Weimar Republic, Berenice Abbott and her Changing New York (1939), Walker Evans and his iconic photos of the Great Depression, Robert Frank’s emblematic The Americans (1959), the first great portrait of American society, or Albert Kahn’s encyclopaedic Archives of the Planet which brought together 72,000 images and 183,000 metres of film on “the cultures of the world” between 1908 and 1931. Like them, Rydet leaves behind a legacy that is at once a work of art, a life project, a tool for knowledge and a visual testament.

Zofia Rydet (Stanislawow, 1911 – Gliwice, 1997) was a Polish photographer renowned for her ambitious documentary project Zapis Socjologiczny (Sociological Record), which she began in 1978. Throughout this work, she photographed thousands of homes and their inhabitants in Poland, exploring identity and collective memory. She began her photographic career at the age of 40 when she joined the Gliwice Photography Society. In 1956, she participated in the Fourth Exhibition of Amateur Women Photographers in Gliwice, marking the start of a path that would lead to international recognition. Over time, she exhibited her work in prestigious venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Venice Biennale. She was awarded the prestigious AFIAP title (Artist of the International Federation of Photographic Art), a distinction granted by the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP). Throughout her career, she participated in numerous, including Fotografia subiektywna (Subjective Photography) at the BWA in Kraków (1968) and Fotografowie poszukujący (Seeking photographers) at the Współczesna Gallery in Warsaw (1971).