Forms of Light - Michał Diament: photography and glass at the Fort Institute of Photography

“Formy światła” (Forms of Light) is an exhibition of the work of Michał Diament (1935-1977), a Wrocław photographer and glass artist, at the Fort Institute of Photography; the museum calls it the artist’s first survey exhibition. It sets his documentary and experimental photographs beside surviving glass objects from the family archive. The exhibition runs 16 September 2026 - 29 November 2026.

The Fort Institute of Photography on the exhibition (the museum’s own English text):

Michał Diament’s body of work defies simple categorisation. It encompasses documentary and experimental photography, the design of functional glassware, unique artistic glasswork and advertising. The first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist does not separate these fields, but presents them as elements of a single practice, centred on light, glass and the transformation of forms.

The starting point was a previously unpublished archive comprising over a thousand negatives, prints, and documentary and experimental photographs, as well as several dozen surviving glass objects. The materials obtained from the artist’s family were, for the first time, subjected to review, research, and digitisation. This made it possible to reconstruct Diament’s creative path and to see how photography and glass consistently intertwined in his work.

Initially, Diament designed simple, functional tableware intended for mass production, in keeping with the ideals of modern design of the 1960s - much like many other representatives of the Wrocław school of glass. However, visits to the glass factory and his contact with the living, malleable mass of glass gradually changed his way of thinking. Glass ceased to be merely a utilitarian material. It became a sculptural medium. In the final years of his life, the artist created organic, unique objects now referred to as ‘Ghosts’, which rank among the most interesting examples of original artistic glasswork from that period.

His photography followed a similar path. From documenting the artistic life of Wrocław and taking photographs of glass for the university and other designers, Diament moved on to experiments in which the camera became a tool for transforming reality. He was interested not so much in the objects themselves as in optical phenomena - reflections, the refraction of light, transparency and the rhythm of forms.

This exhibition presents Michał Diament’s body of work in such a wide-ranging manner for the first time: from documentary photography, through optical experiments and photographs of glass, to preserved functional and artistic objects. In doing so, it brings to light from the archives the figure of an artist whose work adds an important, yet insufficiently recognised, photographic chapter to the history of the Wrocław school of glass.

The exhibition is created in partnership with the successors of Michał Diament’s work and Lisowski Gallery.

Cezary Lisowski’s curatorial text and the artist’s biography, in Polish and in English, are on the exhibition page of the IFF website.

What to expect

According to the museum, the exhibition grows out of the artist’s family archive: more than a thousand negatives, prints and photographs and several dozen surviving glass objects, catalogued and digitised for the first time. The museum does not say how much of this made it into the gallery.

The museum announces four groups of works: documentary photography, optical experiments, photographs of glass, and surviving glass, both functional and artistic. In his curatorial text, Cezary Lisowski gives most attention to the late period. From the mid-1970s Diament travelled to the “Laura” glassworks in Tarnów, where his abstract, organic glass forms were made; the latest of them recall heads or silhouettes.

Diament then portrayed these glass models in colour photographs. He brought them close, split them into fragments within the frame, multiplied them, changed their scale and superimposed negatives, so that a single object gave rise to many images.

According to the curator, the exhibition recalls earlier work but concentrates on this late period, when photography and glass became a single process for Diament. According to the museum, the artist’s late unique glass objects are now known as “Duchy” (Ghosts).

The exhibition shares its gallery with a second exhibition that opened the same evening, Michał Siarek’s “Proszę śmiało wchodzić, zostaniecie dobrze przyjęci” (Come in with confidence, and you will be warmly received). The museum pairs them as an optical diptych: both are about light, colour, reflections and form. The IFF website has no press material and no terms for publishing photographs, so this page carries no photographs of the exhibition.

Context

Michał Diament was born in 1935 in Skarżysko-Kamienna and died in 1977 in Wrocław. In 1961 he settled in Wrocław and studied at the city’s State Higher School of Visual Arts (PWSSP) in the studio of Professor Stanisław Dawski. In 1967 he received his diploma in glass design and began work in the school’s Inter-faculty Photography Department, which he headed from 1974. His work is held by, among others, the National Museum in Wrocław, and his photographs also by the Museum of the History of Photography in Kraków.

According to Wikipedia, the Wrocław school of glass was a convention in art and functional glass among graduates of the Wrocław PWSSP in the second half of the 1950s and the 1960s, shaped by Dawski’s teaching programme: purity and harmony of form, restraint in colour and simplicity of execution. Diament began in this aesthetic with long-stemmed glasses and bottles with indentations on both sides, and over time moved on to unique sculptural forms.

According to a text by Adam Sobota for the Galeria Korytarz in Jelenia Góra, Diament’s best-known works include the cycle “Siatki” (Meshes) of 1967-1971, based on a photograph of a dense mesh fence. The same text names the artist’s largest retrospective: in 1982 at the National Museum in Wrocław. In 2007, on the 30th anniversary of his death, the Domek Romański in Wrocław showed photographs from every stage of his work, and in 2017 the Galeria Korytarz showed the exhibition “Sztuka Fotografii” (The Art of Photography).

The curator, Cezary Lisowski, is an art historian and the owner of the Lisowski gallery in Warsaw, open since September 2023. The museum presents him as the initiator of the exhibition and the keeper of the artist’s archive; the gallery is a partner of the exhibition alongside Diament’s heiresses.

Tickets and time

• Where: in the gallery of the Fort Institute of Photography, in building 2 on the grounds of Fort Mokotów at ul. Władysława Szpilmana 6. Directions are on the museum profile.
• Ticket: according to the exhibition page, admission is free. Siarek’s exhibition is in the same gallery, so both can be seen in one visit.
• When: the gallery is open: Wed-Fri 14:00-19:00 (2-7 PM), Sat-Sun 12:00-19:00 (12-7 PM), closed Mon-Tue. Closed on 1 November 2026 (All Saints' Day). The other holidays on which the IFF is closed are listed on its “Visit us” page.
• Best time to go: on the day of the curator’s tour (see Events). The museum says that on that day only it will show further glass works by Diament that are not part of the exhibition and have never been shown in public.
• How long: the museum does not give the number of works on show. Both exhibitions fit in one ground-floor gallery, so by our editors’ estimate seeing both will take a single visit of about an hour.
• Language: according to the museum, its exhibitions are held in Polish. The full texts on the exhibition, including the curatorial text and the artist’s biography, are in English on the museum’s website.
• Photos: photography is allowed for private use, without flash.
• Accessibility: the gallery is on the ground floor and free of architectural barriers, but the ground in front of the entrance can be uneven. The ground-floor toilet is not adapted for disabled visitors.
• Who it’s for: people interested in the history of Polish experimental photography, in art glass and in the Wrocław school of glass. The museum stresses that the exhibition does not separate photography and glass but shows them as a single practice, so those interested in both will get the most out of it.
• Who can skip it: anyone coming only for the “Siatki” (Meshes) cycle of 1967-1971, counted among Diament’s best-known works. According to the curator, the exhibition concentrates on the late period, and the museum does not say whether “Siatki” is on show.

Events

• Saturday 24 October 2026, 12:00 - a curator’s tour with Cezary Lisowski, combined with a showing of glass works by Diament that are not in the exhibition. According to the museum, this will be “the only day on which these works can be seen”. The event page gives no ticket or registration: fiff.org.pl.

Updates

• 2026-10-15 - the exhibition page gives the closing date as 29 November 2026, while the announcement of the opening and the box on the curator’s tour page still give 15 November 2026. This page follows the date on the exhibition page (source: fiff.org.pl).

See also

• “Come in with confidence, and you will be warmly received” - Michał Siarek - the other half of the optical diptych, as the museum calls the two exhibitions: opened the same evening in the same gallery, as part of the WGW+ programme, curated by Karolina Ziębińska. In Siarek’s work light moves through the landscape of the northern edge of Europe; in Diament’s it settles on glass and passes through it.
• Heliograms in the Solomon Room - works by Nicolas Grospierre in the Palace on the Isle at the Royal Łazienki, made, according to the museum, by the force of light, colour and matter. For those whom “Forms of Light” interests for light as a material; the curator writes that for Diament light is not only a subject but also a material.
• Fort Institute of Photography - profile - directions and practical information. Upstairs is a reading room, in the museum’s words one of the largest open collections of photobooks in Poland; it is reached by stairs only.

Museum profile: Fort Institute of Photography.