Polish Shadow

For over 30 years Rosalind Solomon has been producing emotional imagery that pulls the viewer into a world of sun and shadow where past and present intersect. As she explains of the light and shadow here,“I made my first pictures in Poland in 1988 during a time of political change, and returned there in 2003 in an era of increasing violence and inhumanity worldwide.” All of the images in Polish Shadow are of individuals, their relationships and environments, and each observes and comments on Poland and the larger world: some evoke the darkness of an earlier era and the ghosts of ethnic violence, while others capture a moment in the forward-marching life of modern Europe. As one critic has put it,“Solomon embraces her subjects with unusual warmth—a combination of candor, curiosity and concern,” and that combination of factors can make her photographs as gut-wrenching as they are technically excellent.