Aleksander Minorski. Photography is Intervention

A monographic exhibition opening the jubilee year of the 90th anniversary of the Museum of Warsaw.

Can photography change reality? Can an image showing poverty or work beyond one’s strength become a call for help and an impulse to improve living conditions?

Aleksander Minorski (1906-1982) was convinced it could. A photographer, filmmaker, and writer - today we would also call him an activist - he treated photography primarily as a tool for social engagement and real intervention.

This monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist opens the jubilee year of the 90th anniversary of the Museum of Warsaw and commemorates a creator for whom action on behalf of people living in poverty and on the margins of social life was paramount. Minorski’s work remains almost absent from public awareness today. The exhibition presents the artist’s photographs, films, and texts, focused on the fates of excluded and marginalized individuals, and above all, reveals the attitude and beliefs behind them.

The year 2026, marking the 120th anniversary of Aleksander Minorski’s birth, provides an opportunity to re-read his legacy - perhaps without the prejudices that for decades shaped the reception of creators with communist views.

The exhibition is also a story about a rarely seen face of Warsaw - working-class and poor from the 1930s, as well as the city rebuilt after the war, full of new housing estates emerging in the 1960s and 1970s.