SCREENPRINTINGOFICYNAPERYFERIEFOTOPRACOWNIAWSCHODNIAGALLERY

Foto Pracownia Wschodnia is a place born out of a passion for photography as an artistic craft, founded on the initiative of independent artists and active in art, education and exhibitions.

We run a black-and-white darkroom equipped with enlargers from 35mm to large format, capable of producing large-scale prints on baryta paper. We offer individual and group workshops for professionals and amateurs (from the basics to advanced techniques such as split-grade printing and archival processing). Our studio, with access to daylight and equipped with high-quality flash lighting and modifiers, is also a space for photographers who want to present their work in the form of exhibitions.

   

The Gift

24 September to 4 October 2026
Foto Pracownia Wschodnia
The Gift
Federico Caponi

This text is available in Polish only.

THE GIFT (DAR)

 Każdy, kogo fotografujesz, obdarowuje cię – pozwala ci wkroczyć w swoje życie, a ty masz wobec niego zobowiązanie.

Gary Knight

 

„Dar” (ang. „The Gift”) to ręcznie wykonana książka w formie harmonijki, prezentująca około 130 odbitek srebrowo-żelatynowych zdjęć, które zrobiłem w Delhi i Radżastanie w 2025 roku.

Po złożeniu książka jest niewielka i poręczna, ale wyeksponowana po rozłożeniu osiąga ponad 14 metrów długości. Konstrukcja harmonijki pozwala zmieniać i personalizować kolejność obrazów, a także odnajdywać własną narrację i rytm estetyczny.

 Zdjęcia pierwotnie powstawały z myślą o stworzeniu pamiętnika z podróży po Indiach i szybko zdałem sobie sprawę, że zgromadzony materiał jest dość niejednorodny. Ostatecznie poczułem, że taki sposób fotografowania daje mi wolność i czystą przyjemność, a dzięki ludziom i sytuacjom, które pojawiały się przed moim obiektywem, każde naciśnięcie spustu migawki stawało się wyjątkowym darem.

 W książce prezentuję portrety, sceny z życia ulicy, krajobrazy i napotkane zwierzęta, a fotograficzne powtórzenia i „błędy” stają się kluczowym elementem narracji.

 Aby zachować swobodę ruchu, przyjąłem prostą technikę pracy w terenie: używałem aparatu małoobrazkowego (35 mm) i zaledwie dwóch obiektywów (czasem także niewielkiej lampy błyskowej). Dopiero po powrocie do ciemni budowałem własną paletę wizualną, dobierając odpowiedni kontrast dla filmu i papieru fotograficznego.

Oprócz książki postanowiłem zaprezentować również kilka wielkoformatowych odbitek srebrowo-żelatynowych, wybierając kadry, które w pewnym sensie podsumowują zawartość całego projektu.


  • Federico Caponi - urodzony w Toskanii w 1968; ukończył studia z filozofii na Uniwersytecie we Florencji. Fotograf i wykładowca technik analogowych. Prowadzi ciemnię Pracowni Wschodniej na warszawskiej Pradze. Od 2018 roku wykładowca technik ciemniowych i fotografii dokumentalnej w Akademii Fotografii w Warszawie.
  • https://www.federicocaponi.com/
  • IG

 


 

Zdjęcia z ekspozycji

 

Previous exhibitions

Ada Kurzawa
from 16 June
to 8 August 2026
Jagoda Malanin
from 8 May
to 24 May 2026

The exhibition „Janet wants a yellow mango" presents the photographic practice of Jagoda Malanin, in which the medium of the image becomes a tool for exploring the tension between seeing and desire. It refers to the Lacanian objet petit a, the unattainable object of desire that organises the human gaze. The exhibition is accompanied by a curatorial essay and a guest object by Milena Soporowska.

Dominik Keil
from 27 March
to 19 April 2026

Workspace Submission is a project devoted to the visual exploration of oppression and exploitation in the highly technocratic working reality of so-called white collars – qualified office / knowledge workers who, according to the contemporary Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato, have become the leading labour force of late capitalism.  Dominik Keil

Paulina Bajorowicz
Konrad Bryczek
Radosław Czapla
Aneta Czarnocka-Kanik
Joanna Figarska
Dominik Gajda
Adrian Jędrkowiak
Natalia Knycz
Agnieszka Kowalczyk
Magdalena Noga
Maciek Przemyk
Kasia Rysiak
Milena Soporowska
Magdalena Szymańska
Marta Szyszka
from 20 February
to 15 March 2026

In the stories presented here there is no cool distance, but rather deep entanglement. The exhibition of works made in 2025 consists of personal voices. It proposes an image that makes no claim to being an objective portrait of the region or of the present day. Its strength lies precisely in its subjectivity – in unobvious details, in attentiveness to what is intimate, and in the courage to confront subjects that concern us directly.

Ada Kurzawa
from 13 February
to 14 February 2026

The exhibition *PHOTOAMORIA* by Ada Kurzawa took place on 13 February 2026. The artist, a multidisciplinary researcher, presented photography as a practice of encounter, serving to build connections and to explore experience through being together and time. The show combined projects from the past year, methodologies, stories and encounters, focusing on the nature of relationships. This intimate event invited viewers „inside”, into „the ambiguity and polyphony of the processes of finding and losing connections”. The Foto Gallery was bathed in dimmed violet light, accompanied by a projection, works on the walls and live ambient music performed by Paweł Dobrowolski. The programme also included a „tour” of the darkroom and a performative tour of the drawer, offering an intimate encounter with the process and matter of analogue photography.

Maria Książek
from 22 November
to 14 December 2025

The photographs were taken in Cape Town. The series tells of fragments of the city in which the urban fabric echoes apartheid and contemporary social divisions.

Monika Borowska
from 31 October
to 16 November 2025

The exhibition "JEJ ŚWIATŁO, JEJ CIEŃ" [Her Light, Her Shadow] by Monika Borowska presented a series of photographs and ran from 31 October to 16 November 2025. The project was the artist's personal story about her daughter and their special relationship, focusing on growing up, emotions and the search for closeness. As the artist herself described it: "_This project was born of a need of the heart - of a desire to tell the story of my daughter and our special relationship. It is a personal story about growing up, emotions and the search for closeness in a changing world. The series of photographs shows my fifteen-year-old daughter in dialogue with nature – a space that becomes for her a place of freedom, silence and reflection. Nature here is not merely a backdrop but a fully fledged protagonist of this story. It is also my attempt to understand the world of a young person and to remain by her side - with attentiveness, tenderness and openness._" Szymon Rogiński stressed that it was "_A series of tender, precisely framed glances by Monika Borowska, who appears in two roles - as a photographer and as a mother fighting for her daughter's wellbeing. In the background is the problem of bullying – a systemic phenomenon that is hard to overcome from a parent's perspective. Monika responds to this situation with conscious action: she combines photography with nature. Shared, attentive expeditions into the natural world become a space of collaboration with nature – humanity's best therapist. In her photographs, portraits of the child intertwine with natural elements, taking us on a moving, meditative journey towards healing._"

Kasia Rysiak
Andrea Beggio
Federico Caponi
from 20 September
to 26 October 2025
Through the work of three photographers, Federico Caponi, Kasia Rysiak and Andrea Beggio, the projects presented at FPW illustrate the various motivations of collectors,
from the personal, through the social, to those connected with family
heritage. 
Wojciech Ulman
from 30 August
to 14 September 2025

KONTAKT Z DUCHAMI [CONTACT WITH GHOSTS] says that technology not only changes the way we communicate but also undermines the foundations of human relationships. A real meeting becomes an exceptional experience, one that has to be worked for, one that has to be invented.

Dominik Stępniak
from 31 May
to 21 June 2025

Dominik Stępniak, as a perceptive documentary photographer, analyses a space in which people function in shadow and greyness – without emotion, expressionless, stuck in the mechanical rhythm of work.