The artist of photography, educationist, curator of exhibitions, and organizer of cultural activities
One of the most important artists of polish photography at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. She was born on January 28, 1959, Wrocław.
On her mother's side, Ewa Andrzejewska's family came from Uzbekistan. Ewa’s mother – Galina Iwanowna, née Klimuk, was born and raised in Tashkent in an intellectual family. Her parents came from Samara, Russia, and fled to Tashkent from the Great Famine during the October Revolution. Galina Iwanowna, the future mother of Ewa Andrzejewska, studied at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and graduated in scientific information and bibliography. Ewa’s father, Ryszard Andrzejewski, came from a peasant family from Kujawy. He studied agricultural mechanization in Moscow and met Galina Iwanowna, who soon became his wife, there.
When they came to Poland, they took up residence in Wrocław at Ryszard’s mother’s, and Ewa Andrzejewska was born there. The family lived in Środa Śląska for some time, where Ewa’s mother taught Russian at Szkoła Podstawowa 1000 lecia Państwa Polskiego and at Technikum Ekonomiczne. Ewa Andrzejewska attended Szkoła Podstawowa nr. 3. When the whole family moved to Zgorzelec with Ewa’s younger brother, Mirosław, her mother worked as a teacher at Liceum Ogólnokształcące.
Ewa Andrzejewska’s father built a house at 19 Hanka Sawicka Street, Zgorzelec, where Ewa Andrzejewska lived until 1989. Ryszard Andrzejewski worked at Państwowe Ośrodki Maszynowe and as an agricultural damage appraiser. His last initiative was to build a factory producing parts for agricultural machinery in Zgorzelec. Organizational and financial problems as well as the inability to cross official barriers made it impossible to implement the project and led Ewa’s father to a crisis and suicide.
After her husband’s death, Ewa Andrzejewska’s mother moved to Kromnów near Jelenia Góra. She lived there until the end of her life, over 20 years. She died in 2018. Following her wishes, she was buried in Zgorzelec, next to her husband.
Photography was Ewa Andrzejewska’s passion since her childhood.
She started photographing at the age of 13, and as she said, she knew from the very beginning that she wanted to become a photographer. Her father followed the development and dreams of his daughter; it was he who gave her the first camera. She portrayed her classmates. During the trip to her mother’s homeland, Tashkent, she made her first black and white prints on photographic paper. To deepen her knowledge about the practical side of the photographic craft, Ewa Andrzejewska volunteered to work at Zenon Auksztulewicz’s workshop in Zgorzelec.
When she graduated from secondary school, she began pedagogical studies in Zielona Góra. After the first year, she moved to the University of Wrocław. She obtained the certification of completion in 1984 with a specialization in care and educational pedagogy. During her studies, she also photographed and participated in the university photo club. She took up a job as a photography trainer at Dom Kultury w Zgorzelcu in 1983. She ran a photo club called Nadir there.
Ewa Andrzejewska as a young girl, just after graduation from secondary school, married Grzegorz Zięba. She bore his surname as Ewa Zięba, later Ewa Andrzejewska-Zięba. She signed many of her first photographs that way. Ewa and Grzegorz Zięba signed some photographs together. In photography, they followed a similar path. Ewa Zięba worked mainly on landscapes, but she photographed people and street scenes as well, including theatre festival OSATJA (Ogólnopolskie Spotkania Amatorskich Teatrów Jednego Aktora) in Zgorzelec and street theatre performances during the International Street Theatre Festival in Jelenia Góra. Over time, Grzegorz Zięba took up commercial photography, which provided them with a livelihood. They had mutual exhibitions, they went together on locations, and their friends were connected with photography. At that time, they met, among others, Jana Trawniczek, the director of Bolesławiecki Dom Kultury, who offered them a mutual exhibition at the BOK in 1987. At the time of Zgorzelec, Ewa Andrzejewska - Zięba also met Janina Hobgarska, deputy director of Wojewódzki Dom Kultury, organizer of, among other things, photo events on behalf of WDK. Ewa Zięba participated in the outdoor locations organized by Wojewódzki Dom Kultury w Jeleniej Górze for photography instructors from cultural centres of the entire Jelenia Góra Province. She met Wojciech Zawadzki for the first time on location at Stóg Izerski in 1984. Over time, he became her master in photography, and later her life partner and husband.
During the time of difficult decisions in her private life, her stay at the palace in Maciejowiec, at Dom Pracy Twórczej Akademii Ekonomicznej we Wrocławiu, and the help of Aleksandra Jarocińska, who looked after the palace at that time, were important. Ewa Andrzejewska lived in Maciejowiec for around one year; then, she took one of the most beautiful photographs with something new and fresh about them. In the series from Maciejowiec, including photographs of the chapel, the interior of the mausoleum, palace, and park, her talent and expressive personality were revealed. In her photographs, she recorded sadness, the nostalgia of passing, and the conviction of the fragility of the world. It was a breakthrough for her artistic life. Ewa Andrzejewska revealed the originality of her photography then, to which she remained faithful until the end of her life.
After the divorce in 1990, the artist returned to her maiden name, Andrzejewska, and moved to Jelenia Góra. She took up residence at 4 Świętojańska Street, Apt. 5.
She didn’t marry Wojciech Zawadzki until 1997. They lived on Świętojańska Street until 2010.
They spent the last years of their lives at 10 Daszyński Street, Apt. 2, Jelenia Góra, in the half of a house with a garden and garage, in which Ewa Andrzejewska set up a portrait studio. In 1990, Ewa Andrzejewska took up a job as a photography instructor at Wojewódzki Dom Kultury w Jeleniej Górze (later Regionalne Centrum Kultury, and since 2002 Jeleniogórskie Centrum Kultury). She worked there for the rest of her life.
In the same year, she also began studying at Studium Fotografii ZPAF in Warsaw, where she graduated in 1994. These studies gave her a lot of satisfaction. She wrote her graduate work about the works of Edward Weston. In 1996, she became a member of Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików (card no. 719).
As a photography instructor, she organized Biennale Fotografii Górskiej along with Wojciech Zawadzki. Since the 7th edition, she was the commissioner of Biennale with the accompanying mountain locations in the Karkonosze Mountains, the Stołowe Mountains, and the Rudawy Janowickie. Ewa Andrzejewska was also a co-organizer of the continued idea of Jeleniogórska Wszechnica Fotograficzna, secretary of Wyższe Studium Fotografii w Jeleniej Górze, transformed into Jeleniogórska Szkoła Fotografii. She also organized the exhibitions of Galeria Korytarz together with Wojciech Zawadzki. Besides, she was working fertilely all the time.
She participated in important photography exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
- Biennale Fotografii Polskiej, Wokół Dekady – fotografia polska 1990-2000,
- Kontakty (in all editions since 1989),
- Festiwal polskiej fotografii w Bratysławie,
- Polska fotografia w XX wieku (exhibition prepared on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of ZPAF),
- XX wiek w fotografii polskiej from the collection of the Museum of Art in Łódź in the gallery in Tokyo in Japan,
- Niebieska flasza in the National Museum in Wrocław.
Since the 1990s, she took photographs only in a traditional way, using large-format cameras. Her favourite cameras were the Ica with the 9x12 cm film format and the Toyo with the 4x5 inch format. She made photographs from negatives on photographic paper in the darkroom, and she gradated the prints. She made the solution in order to obtain the sepia tone for her photographs. Working in the darkroom was her very personal occupation, susceptible to Ewa’s emotions and moods. As she said, she could “charm” under an enlarger, turning negatives and exposing some of them twice. She most willingly showed her favourite small-format photographs but was able to take beautiful, large-format enlargements (the largest in the format of approx. 50x60). She called all of her photographs souvenir ones, taken “w drodze” or “po drodze.” In her photographic wanderings, she was always accompanied by her dogs, Toyo and Ica, named after the brands of her favourite cameras.
In photography, she was interested in the mountain landscape as well as the urban one. Many photographs were taken in Jelenia Góra and its immediate vicinity, such as the above-mentioned series from Maciejowiec. At the end of the 90s, she received a scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. At the time, she made a series of photographs in towns and villages in the vicinity of Jelenia Góra and Pogórze Izerskie, like Kromnów, Lubawka, and Wleń. She also photographed outside Jelenia Góra, including Warsaw and Cracow (a series from Kazimierz), and more exotic ones, such as the Greek island, Santorini. The truth about the surrounding reality was the starting point for her photography, but her art was not about material proof of existence. It rose above pure recording and transcended the boundaries of photography perceived as a document. Her photographs are extraordinary: they emanate something elusive, deeply spiritual, which defies the possibility of translating visual experiences into the language of words.
Ewa Andrzejewska photographed in the mountains a lot. She took mountain photographs in the Karkonosze Mountains, the Rudawy Janowickie, the Stołowe Mountains, also on the Czech side, and occasionally in the Pieniny. She went to the Tatra Mountains for the first time with her friends, Janusz Nowacki, Rafał Swosiński, and Wojciech Zawadzki. She returned to the high mountains several times and made many beautiful Tatra photographs.
She photographed nature: grasses, ferns, trees. She called the cycles of nature photography botanical photography.
Portraiture was an important part of her artistic work. She made one of the surviving early portrait series between 1984 and 1989. During her stay at the palace in Maciejowiec, she also made many portraits of friends.
In 1996, she started the cycle titled Artyści wiejscy in cooperation with the ethnologist Henryk Dumin, with whom she worked at Regionalne Centrum Kultury w Jeleniej Górze then. A set of portraits of folk artists was created, a hundred of which are in the collections of the National Museum in Wrocław.
Ewa Andrzejewska always dreamt of having her own photo studio where she could photograph people. Her dream came true when they took up residence on Daszyński Street, Jelenia Góra, in 2010. In the part of the garage, she set up a photo studio, which she called Zakład portretowy im. Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza. Within its activity, she made portraits in honour of Witkacy with the "faces" of many friends and relatives of her.
Throughout her entire life, Ewa Andrzejewska took self-portraits as well.
As a partner of Wojciech Zawadzki, who had the ability to gather people around him, she participated in the photographic life in their photographic home and, in connection with her work, in Jeleniogórskie Centrum Kultury. In the studio of JCK at 25 Plac Ratuszowy, Apt. 26, on the top floor of a tenement house overlooking the town hall, which was an important place for the development of photography and integration of the photographic community, the most important among her relatives was the circle of photographers, just like her, thinking about photography and dealing with photography in a classic way. They were: Wojciech Zawadzki, Maciej Hnatiuk, Eugeniusz Józefowski, Jacek Jaśko, Janina Hobgarska, Rafał Swosiński, Jakub Byrczek, Janusz Nowacki, Jaroslav Beneš, Piotr Komorowski, Halina Morcinek, Marek Szyryk and Sławoj Dubiel, Tomasz Mielech, Krzysztof Niewiadomski, Marcin Kiełbiewski, Marek Dziedzic, Tomasz Michałowski, Patryk Lewkowicz, and many, many others that cannot be mentioned. Szkoła Fotografii at JCK, which she ran with Wojciech Zawadzki, gathered more friends, who grew closer and closer with time, both among the teaching staff (Adam Sobota, Andrzej Pytliński, Marek Liksztet, Wojciech Jankowski, Joanna Mielech) and students (Mariola Nehrebecka, Wojciech Miatkowski, Magdalena Borowicz, Jolanta Chowanska, and many, many others).
After the death of Wojciech Zawadzki in June 2017, Ewa Andrzejewska framed and prepared for exhibition his last photographs from the Hobbiton series.
On August 21, 2017, she committed suicide in her studio in the house on Daszyński Street, Jelenia Góra. She bequeathed her entire artistic legacy to Przemysław Winczewski from Cracow, who was her friend for many years. Ewa Andrzejewska was buried with Wojciech Zawadzki in the Old Cemetery on Sudecka Street, Jelenia Góra.
She was the author of many individual exhibitions, presented in the years 1985-2017 in Poland and abroad.
The first individual exhibition at Galeria Korytarz of Ośrodek Kultury w Jeleniej Górze took place in 1989. Wojciech Zawadzki was the curator of this presentation.