![grafika z tekstem [journeys to the east]](https://www.muzeumazji.pl/maip/uploads/2022/08/baner_strona_english_tn-1140x220.jpg)
Transformations. Historical and Contemporary Photography from the Asia and Pacific Museum
Historical and Contemporary Photography from the Asia and Pacific Museum is the first presentation in the museum’s history of its photographic archive of over 77,000 items. The collection was built over decades thanks to the trust of more than 130 donors – photographers, researchers, diplomats and travellers who entrusted their private holdings to the museum. The images on show are not only a record of places and customs, but above all evidence of the processes at work in the societies of Asia and Oceania.
At the heart of the display are 80 selected photographs arranged in 40 thematic pairs. Setting older images – the earliest of them more than a hundred years old – against contemporary digital photographs opens a space for observing the dynamics of change in the culture, crafts, architecture and everyday life of the people of Asia and Oceania. The pairings touch on the transformation of the urban fabric, the realities of work, leisure, the theme of travel and rice cultivation, among others.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated bilingual catalogue with reproductions of the photographs on show and introductory essays on the role of photography in ethnographic museums. Admission is free.
Exhibition opening: Thursday, September 24, at 6:00 p.m. Free admission.
Dates: September 24, 2026 – January 24, 2027
Photography has become such an integral and indispensable part of our lives that it is easy to forget it is less than 200 years old: its origins date back to 1839. Photographs also became collectors’ items – they were already collected by nineteenth-century pioneers of photography, such as William Fox Talbot.
Photography also serves as documentation and a source for research by historians, ethnographers and historians of technology. Public museums began to emerge in the eighteenth century, evolving from the private Renaissance cabinets of curiosities (Kunstkammern) that preceded them, although the idea of collecting and displaying rare objects goes back to antiquity. Ethnographic museums appeared in the nineteenth century, reflecting a growing appreciation of national histories as well as the Romantic discovery of the value of folk culture. Photographic collections help us understand objects held in ethnographic museums. They reveal the original contexts in which these objects were used – contexts that may have since ceased to exist. They may also document the customs of particular communities, some of which are no longer practised. In other words, they record change.
The Asia and Pacific Museum holds around 77,000 photographs by more than 130 photographers. This exhibition, which explores transformations in daily life across Asia and Oceania, is also the first to focus on the Museum’s photographic collection. It presents 80 photographs on 40 selected themes, juxtaposing ‘then’ and ‘now’. Each of these 40 pairs invites us to reflect on what has changed – and what is immune to change.
Photo by Łukasz Brodowicz
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Transformations: Historical and Contemporary Photography from the Asia and Pacific Museum, the first exhibition to place the Museum’s photographic holdings at its centre.
Drawing on photographs taken across different periods and places by numerous authors, the publication brings together images that document the people, places and customs of Asia and Oceania. Viewed side by side, they reveal both the scale and pace of social and cultural change and the elements that have endured over time as part of local traditions.
The catalogue also reflects the Museum’s commitment to preserving, cataloguing, digitising and making its photographic collections accessible. By bringing these materials together and placing them in a broader context, it opens up new connections between individual collections and creates further possibilities for research, exhibitions and education.
Editing and introductory text: Krzysztof Morawski, Ph.D.
Academic consultation: Magdalena Ginter-Frołow, Ph.D.
Publication coordination: Zofia Modzelewska
Proofreading: Anna Kaniewska
English translation: Aleksandra Szkudłapska
Graphic design and layout: Barbara Bugalska
Digitisation of photographs: Syaiful Bahri
Photo editing: Konrad Dobrucki
Publisher: Muzeum Azji i Pacyfiku im. Andrzeja Wawrzyniaka w Warszawie
Print: Drukarnia Totem, | paper Munken Lynx Rough 120g
-
- page 42-43
-
- page 60-61
-
- page 94-95
