The exhibition “From Darkness. The Encounter. Reportage” continues the project “From Darkness – the Archive and Contemporary Times. Aspects of Memory”, dedicated to the history of a family, a local community, and the Jewish community from Otfinów and the Tarnów region. This new chapter of the project documents the artist’s meeting with a descendant of a family whose members are commemorated in the archives of the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem.
In June 2025, the artist traveled to Israel to find individuals whose names appear in testimonies deposited at Yad Vashem. In Haifa, she met Haya – the great-granddaughter and granddaughter of people originally from Otfinów who had settled in Tarnów before the war. Haya had submitted testimony to Yad Vashem about the fate of her grandfather and great-grandfather. During their meeting, she showed the artist her family album and documents, speaking about her ancestors, their prewar life, and the tragic destiny of her family during the Holocaust.
The meeting with Haya was filled with deep emotion and tenderness. Seeing the artist, who came from the same town as her ancestors, Haya said it felt as though she were seeing a spirit from the past. She opened her intimate world to her guest, sharing memories that had been passed down through her family for generations.
As they looked together at photographs of Haya’s ancestors and images from Otfinów, the artist felt that, in a way, the circle of history was closing – the life stories that had run in parallel for years now intersected in one place. Despite the generational gap, both women were united by a shared need to nurture memory and to restore a voice to those who are no longer here.
The journey and the scheduled meeting took place just as the conflict between Israel and Iran began. In these circumstances, the artist found safe refuge with an archivist from the Yad Vashem Institute, who welcomed her into her home. This experience gave the entire project an additional dimension – that of a personal encounter with memory, one that exists not only in archives but also in human solidarity.
The exhibition “From Darkness. The Encounter. Reportage” is a visual and documentary reportage about these events – the meeting of two women connected by the history of a place, by memory, and by the need to preserve traces of those who perished. It is a story about dialogue between descendants of victims and witnesses, about the coexistence of different perspectives, and about the shared search for a language of memory.
The event is part of the project “ReActMem,” funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. The European Union cannot be held responsible for them.
The exhibition was created as part of the diploma from Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Faculty of Graphic Arts, department of Photography under supervision of dr. hab, prof. Agata Pankiewicz.
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The event is carried out as part of the project “ReActMem: Rescue Memory – Activism, Art, and Public Memory,” co-funded by the European Union under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme (2024–2026).
The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. The European Union cannot be held responsible for them.
