UK/POLAND SEASON 2025: Polish Photography Masters at Northern Ireland’s Leading Gallery – Belfast Exposed

The works of four acclaimed Polish photographers – Zofia Rydet, Anna Beata Bohdziewicz, Teresa Gierzyńska and Aneta Grzeszykowska – will be presented at Northern Ireland’s foremost photography gallery, Belfast Exposed Gallery. The photographs will be presented across three exhibitions – “In Her Own Image”, “Gathering Time” and “Photo-Diary” – open to the public from 2 October to 20 December 2025. Although created in different times and historical contexts, the artists’ works share a common feature: the use of the camera as a tool of resistance and a medium for storytelling. The exhibitions highlight the unique contribution of Polish female artists to the development of contemporary photography, while also opening a wider discussion on the role of women in art and society. 

The project is part of the ongoing UK/Poland Season 2025 cultural programme, co-organised by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and the Polish Cultural Institute in London, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. 

“In Her Own Image” / “Gathering Time” / “Photo-Diary” – three exhibitions, four artists, one shared story 

Belfast Exposed, one of Northern Ireland’s foremost independent photography centres, will host three exhibitions – “In Her Own Image”, “Gathering Time”, and “Photo-Diary” – exploring how different generations of Polish female artists have used photography to question identity, memory and the visibility of women’s lives. The exhibitions will feature four artists whose work marks turning points in the tradition of Polish photography: Zofia Rydet, Anna Beata Bohdziewicz, Teresa Gierzyńska, and Aneta Grzeszykowska.  

The selection of works, curated by Karolina Ziębińska and Deirdre Robb, places these artists side by side, creating a powerful intergenerational dialogue that emphasises the dual role of photography – as archive and experiment, empathy and critique. The artists demonstrate that self-representation is never neutral – it is an act of agency, a declaration of existence and a challenge to cultural limitations.  

Archive, living experiment, medium of empathy – different dimensions of Polish photography this autumn in Belfast (and beyond) 

“In Her Own Image: Fragments of a Feminine Self” brings together Teresa Gierzyńska’s pioneering practice and Aneta Grzeszykowska’s radical explorations. The resulting intergenerational dialogue addresses the theme of the body – especially the female body. Gierzyńska, active since the 1970s, transformed the private space of domestic life into a stage for performance, using self-portraiture to question identity, intimacy, and the roles imposed on women. Grzeszykowska, representing the post-1989 generation, revisits similar themes through digital manipulation, sculpture, and the category of the uncanny. By erasing herself from family photographs in “Album” or fragmenting her body in “Selfie”, she confronts visibility, absence, and the construction of identity in a media-saturated world. 

The exhibition “Zofia Rydet: Gathering Time” presents Rydet’s monumental “Sociological Record” – an extraordinary photographic archive documenting life in the Polish countryside during a period of rapid social change. Thousands of portraits and interior photographs form both an anthropological record and a tribute to deeply human experience, preserving disappearing customs and the spaces of a vanishing world. 

Zofia Rydet’s “Sociological Record” will also be on display from 10 October at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, in the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. This monumental work is considered one of the most significant achievements of 20th-century Polish photography. It has previously been exhibited at prestigious venues such as MoMA and the International Center of Photography in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The exhibition is organised in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Zofia Rydet Foundation and will run until 22 February 2026.