Aleksandra Kossowska, Poland
Aleksandra Kossowska is a Polish documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Warsaw, focusing on displacement, disability, migration, and marginalized communities across Central and Eastern Europe. With a background in archaeology and journalism from the University of Warsaw, she earned her B.A. with distinction from the ITF Opava and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree there. Her work has received international recognition, including The Alexia Portrait Mentor Grant, and she co-founded Poleczki.art, a photography center in Warsaw dedicated to contemporary photography.
Growing up in a world that is invisible from the very beginning. Understanding the world through touch, sounds, textures, smells—and no light anywhere. Even the Polish photographer Aleksandra Kossowska was unable to capture blindness in images. The star-like clouds she has added to the black-and-white photographs of blind or severely visually impaired children at a school in Sebeta, Ethiopia—southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa—are her attempt at a translation. They visualize an aura, perhaps flashes of insight that are possible even without sight. Perhaps emotions. Perhaps an interaction between the inner and outer worlds. Perhaps also something that is difficult for sighted people to put into words.
Alexandra Kossowska has witnessed the children navigating the invisible, from a spartan shelter, in cramped shared dormitories, far from their families. Yet they are not left entirely to their own devices; they are surrounded by care and determination. And driven by the desire to achieve independence in the world of the sighted.
The photographer sees her work not least as an ‘invitation’ to us to empathise, rather than to look away. She says: ‘The world touches us when we touch it.’ To make what she was doing with the images tangible for the children too, she perforated the photos by hand, with tiny dots and delicate lines. A tiny gesture towards making peace with disability. With the moment – and later, perhaps, even with life itself.
Based in Warsaw, the 48-year-old photographer – having studied archaeology and photography – is, amongst other things, a co-founder of Poleczki.art, a centre that combines a gallery, library, studio and teaching spaces for contemporary photography. In addition to receiving numerous awards, her work has been featured in exhibitions from Eastern Europe to the USA.
(Laudatio by Peter-Matthias Gaede)