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Lab short abstract

This lab explores polarisation in Poznań through anthropological photography and visual storytelling. In collaboration with Pix.House, participants learn documentary photography methods and join a guided photowalk to experiment with anthropological photography.

Lab long abstract

Photography has a long history in anthropology, mostly as a marker of scientific validity (Perera 2019). More recently, photo-anthropologists have called for a reconsideration of photography as a medium of future anthropologies (Leon-Quijano 2022; Miller 2024). In this sense, photography stops being an impartial record and becomes an active medium (and a subject) that shapes how social worlds are perceived, negotiated, performed, and contested.

In Poland, documentary photography has developed a particularly rich vocabulary for exploring social transformation and polarisation. Poznań’s Pix.House has become a central hub for this work, sustaining a vibrant culture of exhibitions, workshops, photobook publications, and community-based archival projects that collectively document political, social, and generational shifts. Within this environment, documentary projects such as “NIE-NOT” (Wykrota 2018), “MECHANZM” (Forecki 2019), and the “Public Protest Archive” exemplify how Polish photographers use visual storytelling to reflect on emerging civic tensions, historical continuities, and the multiplicity of voices shaping public life. Their work demonstrates the potential of photography as a means for anthropological discourse.

This Lab introduces participants to contemporary documentary photography in Poland and invites them to experiment with this medium as an ethnographic method. After a brief discussion of selected works from the Pix.House collection, participants will grab their cameras and join a guided photowalk in the centre of Poznań, exploring how photography can facilitate anthropological reflections on the past and present of a city in transformation. The session concludes with a collective reflection on how photo-anthropology can challenge, complicate, and expand disciplinary understandings of polarisation.