When the post-WWI world was reinventing itself, photography became, next to film, the most powerful means of expression, communication and documentation. In Germany, the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic were immortalised by the photographic medium and, in turn, photography would undergo numerous thematic and aesthetic transformations, supported by innovative film and printing techniques, that were influenced by the chaos and experimentation of the time. At this time, it gained a unique quality and power of impact, and proved to be as influential as the written word. The exhibition Not only Bauhaus. Interwar German photography and Polish traces at the International Culture Centre is a selected version of the Photography in the Weimar Republic exhibition from 2019-2020, supplemented with Polish parallels and photography from that time, which, entering into a dialogue with German examples, gives an impulse for comparisons, exposing differences and similarities related to the political and social experience of those years. The exhibition not only introduces the cultural context of the interwar period, but is also a story about photography in its various dimensions: artistic, experimental, but also focused on "here and now" - reportage, documentary, advertising or fashion.

The multithreading of the narrative translates into the photographic genres presented at the exhibition in the form of over 300 classic prints, but also books and magazines, because they too helped shape the imagination of regular people in the 1920s. Visitors can admire the works of artists such as Martin Munkácsi, a master of press photography, known for his dynamic photographic compositions, August Sander, author of outstanding sociological portraits, Albert Renger-Patzsch, a leading representative of 'New Objectivity', Yva (Else Neuländer-Simon), famous for fashion photography, Karl Blossfeld, known for precise plant photography, Alfred Eisenstaedt, the father of photojournalism, and, Lotte Jacobi, photographer from Poznań. The exhibitions Polish champions are represented by, among others, Aleksander Krzywobłocki, an artist specialising in surreal photography, the rather avant-garde Janusz Maria Brzeski, art photographer Zofia Chomętowska, master of portrait photography Benedykt Jerzy Dorys, leader of of Polish pictorialism Jan Bułhak and Henryk Poddębski, an outstanding photojournalist and chronicler of the Second Polish Republic.