Waiting For the Snow
Marianne Wasowska and Katarzyna Wąsowska
Yogurt Editions
English
Hardcover
Edition of 500
156 pages
168 × 235 mm
2025
ISBN 9791298521148
This project tells the story of Polish migration to South America, with a particular focus on Brazil and Argentina, which were the main points of destination. It emerged from the desire to shed light on a little-known aspect of the colonization of the Americas: in Central Europe, the conquest of these new lands was the subject of veritable advertising campaigns that touted the colonial adventure as a means of upward social mobility, aimed at the most deprived populations, peasants and workers who had been relieved by successive wars. Their descendants tell the story of how, when they arrived, they set to work preparing for winter, without knowing that it would never arrive. The central issue concerns the identity dynamics that run through these communities, mainly peasants, in these new lands. The brutality of the contrast between their extremely cold place of origin and the subtropical jungle where they settled seems to Marianne Wasowska and Katarzyna Wąsowska ideal for highlighting the idea of identity as a construction. A process which, after multiple historical hybridisations and fragmentations, is increasingly approaching fiction. Working with historical and anthropological documents, maps and archival images, this project aims to base itself on the oral transmission as raw material. They construct photographs from selected fragments extracted from this collective memory, producing a collaborative and poetic form of documentary, composed from the fragile material of the imaginary.
(Source: www.mariannewasowska.com/work/waiting-for-the-snow)
About the Artist
Marianne Wasowska’s photographic work is developed through anthropologically inspired documentary research, generally long-term, which places the relationship at the centre of the work, considering it both as a problematic and as a theme. By putting in dialogue heterogeneous documents (archival images, documents, drawings, sound recordings, etc.), she tries to build polyphonic narratives that question the notion of authorship and anchor their structure in the plurality of interwoven voices. She also works on mental images and the limits of perception, studying the implications of the body in the formation of images: in the retina, in the brain, within the exhibition space. She uses light to design photographic installations in which the appearance and disappearance of the image mobilises the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms of visitors. Her practice incorporates poor, stolen images, shrunken to the point of abstraction: screenshots, digital distortions, glitches, etc., mixing them with analogue processes that carry the indelible prejudice of a physical presence in front of the photographed, thus creating hybrid materialities. She relates to the different photographic media as traces of our presence in the world.
www.mariannewasowska.com
(Source: www.mariannewasowska.com/about)
Katarzyna Wąsowska is a photographer, gardener and social activist living between Gdynia and Poznań. She is a graduate of photography at the University of Arts and anthropology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In her creative explorations, she focuses on issues related to migration, identity and nature. Her work balances the border of document and creation, being at the same time an artistic and research practice. She tries to construct visual statements on socio-political issues by referring to scientific and quasi-scientific literature, searching through archives, collecting stories through interviews or working with local communities.
www.katarzynawasowska.com/
(Source: www.katarzynawasowska.com/bio)
About the Publisher
Yogurt is an independent curatorial and publishing platform working at the intersection of photography, visual culture, and contemporary storytelling. Founded in Rome in 2015, it develops books, exhibitions, educational programs, and editorial projects that investigate how images shape our understanding of the world. Rather than focusing on photography as a medium alone, Yogurt is interested in photography as a cultural language: a way of observing, questioning, and interpreting social, political, and personal realities. Through publishing, critical writing, and collaborative projects, it creates opportunities for authors, artists, and audiences to engage with visual narratives in meaningful ways. Today, Yogurt operates through its online magazine, publishing house, educational activities, and international partnerships, building a network that connects research, creation, and public discourse around contemporary visual culture. Yogurt is also a Creative Agency. Art direction for publishers, cultural institutions, artists, photographers, festivals, and brands.
https://yogurtmagazine.com
(Source: https://yogurtmagazine.com/about)
