Tadeusz Rolke - Black Paw

Tadeusz Rolke Black Paw

January 22, 2021 – March 26, 2022
Curator: Trasa W-Z

It is the spring of 1971. 42-year-old Polish émigré Tadeusz Rolke photographs his friend Małgorzata Miklasz in a flat in Hamburg's Eppendorf district. The prop accompanying the photographic session is an absurd object made of polyvinyl chloride: a black paw filled with air. The photographer captures over 130 shots of the model. All but two of the negatives disappear without trace as Rolke changes homes more than once . In 2020, Rolke finds completely destroyed negatives (contact sheets). Robert Jarosz scans the unusable material and then he passes them on to Inga Cendrowicz. In the spirit of analogue photography, she meticulously reconstructs the destroyed shots, creating new quality: digital positives. Rolke recovers lost photographs and, after half a century, pays tribute to his deceased friend Małgorzata.