Cactus, the 1950s

Fortunata Obrapalska became interested in photography in 1935, inspired by her husband, Zygmunt (a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers), and by Jan Bulhak whom she had met just before World War II broke out. At the beginning of the 1940s, she lived with her husband in Vilnius. In 1941 and 1942, two underground exhibitions were organized in their flat. In 1945, she moved to Poznan and became a member of the Poznan Association of Photography Lovers. In 1947, she became a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers. At that time, her work was recognized during numerous exhibitions (Nowoczesna Fotografika Polska - English: Modern Polish Photography, Warsaw, Cracow, 1948; I Wystawa Sztuki Nowoczesnej - English: The First Modern Art Exhibition, Cracow, 1948-1949). In 1948-52, she co-edited the first post-war periodical about artistic photography, which was published in Poznan and titled 'Swiat Fotografii' (English: 'The World of Photography'). She was interested in surrealism and abstraction, and her works were awarded many times, for example, she received the first award during the First Photography Competition of the Ministry of Culture and Art for the 'Diffusion in a Liquid' (Polish: 'Dyfuzja w cieczy') series. It was a series of photographs showing oniric shapes of black ink expanding in a container filled with water. Those works were by no means a documentary record of a physical phenomenon. The artist intervened in the process very much, changing the shape of the ink, and the final photographs all had their own titles corresponding to the the objects which came to viewers' minds during the appreciation of the the photographs. Obrapalska tried to express her fascination with the disturbances of the stereotypical vision in photography. She belonged to the Poznan 4F+R group, together with, among other members, Alfred Lenica, Ildefons Houwalt, and Feliks M. Nowowiejski. In the late 1950s, Obrapalska continued creating images inspired by the aesthetics of surrealism, developing the motifs she had worked on in the 1940s and enriching them through her fascination with matter and with the abstract representation of reality. Those two periods of time were separated by the style of social realism, enforced in Poland in the 1950s. The artist tried to find her way within that aesthetics, with the use of such techniques as solarisation, pseudo-solarisation, or multiple exposure. She co-organized the international 'Krok w nowoczesnosc' (English: 'A Step Into Modernity', 1957) exhibition - the first one after the period of social realism. At the end of her life, Obrapalska photographed nature. Her greatest retrospective exhibitions were the presentations in Galeria Miejska 'Arsenal' (1999), the Museum of History of Photography in Cracow (2001/2002), Galeria Fotografii B&B in Bielsko-Biala (2004). Obrapalska donated some of her works to the Museum of History of Photography.

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