Fotograf Magazine

I first met Jerzy Olek (b. 1943) in the late 1970s. He was already at that time regarded as an ambitious intellectual whose range of activity was not limited to photography. At the time, he was editor of the Fotografia quarterly, as well as head of the Foto–Medium–Art gallery in Wrocław. Even today, it is of little importance to him whether he expresses himself through writing, photography, video, drawing, objects, organizing exhibitions, or through his role as a teacher.

Photosphere

At the symposium entitled Issues of the Language of Photography held in Gorzów Wielkopolski in the spring of 1978, Olek declared that he was particularly preoccupied with the ideological aspect of art. He pursued analysis of the media that he worked with, but did not regard photography as a specific language and expressly warned against the mechanical application of linguistic methods to the examination of images.