On the sidelines of the 2024 edition of the Łódź Fotofestiwal, our correspondent Laurine Varnier met Anna Maria Zegar and Ewa Cecylia Januszewska, both second-year students at the Łódź School of Photography.
It’s Sunday evening in June, and a light rain is falling. The Artinkubator, that large red-brick building, a witness to the city’s distant industrial golden age, has just closed. We are in Łódź (pronounced ‘Woudje’), in central Poland. Anna and Ewa are sipping a (Polish) beer on the terrace of a bar at the back of the courtyard. They are in their second year at the Łódź photography school.
Ewa, with a round haircut, sells books at the city’s photo festival. Both are regulars at the event. Anna, with sparkling eyes, comes from a small town near Rzeszów (pronounced ‘Résovie’) not far from the Ukrainian border. The city attracts her: the atmosphere, the countless encounters possible… It was her father who gave her her first camera as a child. Her passion for people drives her to continue. Ewa, on the other hand, is a girl from the capital. For the first time, she has left her family home and is living alone in her student room in Łódź. Film photography was her first school: “It taught me how to frame, to better construct my photos by imagining them mentally.” These mental images, she draws them in a notebook that accompanies her everywhere.
Łódź, an artistic revelation
Anna and Ewa have known each other for a year, and you can sense a true friendship and artistic bond when listening to them. “We do very different things,” explains Ewa as she scrolls through her friend’s Instagram feed on her phone. “There is real trust in our class,” Anna adds. “At first, we were all a bit isolated, each in our own world. Now, we consult each other about our work, always being honest.”
When she was younger, Anna felt isolated from people her age: “When I have a camera in hand, the stress evaporates—I feel fulfilled.” Today, she doesn’t hesitate to contact models she likes directly on social media to propose a photoshoot. “I like to get to know people before photographing them. Often, we’ll have a coffee together to establish a first connection. I have all the time in the world; the goal is also to make them feel comfortable.”
These two young photographers have plenty of projects! Ewa would like to photograph each of her classmates during their years at the Łódź photography school and over a longer period. Her other project is more personal: her father has always been strict with her, very busy with work. The young woman grew up in a rather religious environment from which she has distanced herself. “In this series of photos dedicated to my father, I try to show his strict personality.” A certain order, almost millimetric, emerges from her shots.
Building a photographic work: a life’s work
The question of time weighs heavily on Anna: “I’m still finding myself, and I’m using my studies to build myself.” She loves her adopted city, Łódź, a city with an industrial past and bleak winters. Boxes aren’t for her: she experiments with portraiture, photographs her mother, and tells stories through her photos. Ewa and Anna are unanimous—they want to live in a place connected to Poland. While Ewa has had the opportunity to travel, she only truly feels at home in Poland, a country she keeps in her viewfinder.
To discover their work on Instagram:
