“Amalia / Their Breasts, My Breasts” Krieger / Leigh – vernissage

A woman of many photographs and one great gesture. When Amalia Krieger and her brother Natan inherited Ignacy Krieger’s photography studio, they decided to keep signing photographs with their famous father’s name. He is still famous today thanks to Amalia’s decision—after she had become the only official owner of the atelier—to donate the family’s collection of photographic plates to Kraków. She preserved the memory of the city, its monuments and its people. But who was this incredible Jewish woman, one of the first Polish photographers? Did she consider herself a pioneer, an artist? We know about what she did, we know about the way she worked. As for her thoughts and ideas—we will try to access them through her photography.

An installation of sculptural works by Stephania Freda Leigh, Oh, Their Breasts, Oh, My Breasts explores the sexual trauma inflicted upon women during the Holocaust. Leigh’s work—usually brightly colored, participatory, and bouncing—here takes form in a silent, lamenting, and weeping disposition. The exhibition problematizes the lack of recorded and shared knowledge of testimonies of sexual violence from the Holocaust and wartime in general, and continues Leigh’s investigation into what it means to be a Jewish Australian Polish Female Artist, and how her Jewish female body mourns the experiences of her ancestors.