Galerie nEUROPA

/ 4 days / 4 photographers / 4 themes /

The exhibition 4#4#Białystok at the nEUROPA Gallery brings together photographic works by three photographers from Germany (Jürgen Matschie / Jan Oelker / Matthias Schumann) and the Białystok-based Polish photographer Piotr Niedźwiedź.

The starting point and shared framework is the eastern Polish city of Białystok – a place that, like few others, represents the historical fractures, cultural overlaps and current social tensions in Europe. The three Saxon photographers visited the city in autumn 2024 as part of their participation in a photography festival.

Białystok is located near the current Polish-Belarusian border and has been a political, religious and cultural crossing point for centuries. The city belonged to various ruling powers – the Polish-Lithuanian state, the Russian Empire, and was also briefly under German occupation – and was characterised by the close coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population constituted a significant part of the city’s society; Białystok was regarded as an important centre of Jewish culture, language and industry. The Shoah marked an almost complete break with this tradition, traces of which are now only fragments in the urban landscape.

The photographs in the exhibition approach Białystok from the photographers’ subjective perspectives and explore various aspects of urban life. They reveal traces of Jewish history as well as contemporary expressions of urban culture, such as the local graffiti and street art scene. Typical urban spaces – housing estates, squares, peripheral areas – are shown as places of everyday life, but also as projections of social and political negotiation processes.

Another focus of the exhibition is on current areas of social conflict. By coincidental chance, the German photographers witnessed a large LGBT demonstration, which highlights Białystok’s particular role in the current Polish discourse, where issues of identity, minority rights and national self-definition are heavily contested. The city is constantly seen as a symbol of conservative and nationalist tendencies, yet at the same time it is also a scene of counter-movements, civic engagement and cultural resistance.

The interaction of the four photographic perspectives does not result in a uniform portrait of the city, but rather a multi-layered mosaic. The external perspectives of the German photographers meet a Polish perspective that is more strongly characterised by proximity, everyday experience and historical roots. It is precisely in this juxtaposition that productive spaces of tension open up between observation and participation, distance and identification.

4#4#Białystok is more than just an exhibition about a specific city; it is a reflection on urban spaces in border regions, on memory and visibility, and on the political and cultural influences shaping European cities today.

Participating photographers

Jürgen Matschie (DE)
Jan Oelker (DE)
Matthias Schumann (DE)
Piotr Niedźwiedź (PL)

Curated by

Matthias Schumann

Cover image

Piotr Niedźwiedź (exhibition), Jürgen Matschie (vernissage)

Das Projekt wird gefördert durch das Staatsministerium für Soziales und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt. Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert mit Steuermitteln auf Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushaltes im Rahmen des Förderprogramms »Wir für Sachsen«.