Girls – Wojciech Plewiński

The exhibition Girls by Wojciech Plewiński opened on March 8, 2019, at Art Haven in Poznań, right on International Women’s Day. Seventeen portraits of women, photographed by this legend of Polish photography for the covers of the iconic magazine Przekrój, were presented.

The photographs featured, among others, Anna Dymna, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Barbara Kwiatkowska, and Ewa Krzyżewska — women admired for their natural beauty and charm. At the vernissage, the audience had the chance to meet 91-year-old Wojciech Plewiński himself, along with his son Maciej, also a photographer. The exhibition ran until April 7.

Wojciech Plewiński, born in 1928, began photographing in the 1950s and quickly gained recognition for his sensitive and attentive eye. Compared to French humanist photographers such as Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau, he captured both everyday life and women, who in his lens acquired a remarkable presence. His greatest popularity came with the “kociaki” (kittens) — the Przekrój cover girls, who became symbols of freshness and sensuality in the era of the Polish People’s Republic.

His portraits were not merely aesthetic images. They were documents of their time. In contrast to the official depictions of women of the period, which portrayed model workers and labourers, Plewiński showed everyday heroines — natural, relaxed, full of life. Today, his photographs still make a powerful impression, reminding us of authentic beauty, of photography free from digital retouching and the cult of excess.