III Cracow Month of Photography

Cracow's 'Month of Photography Festival' will kick off on Monday 23rd October. Now in its third year, the festival has already taken its place as one of the star events of the season.

This year there will be over 50 separate exhibitions, including several by distinguished international photographers. Two of the hot names of last year's festival will be exhibiting again, including American Michael Ackerman and Italian Lorenzo Castore.

The lion's share of the events will be held in venues in the Old Town - some of the best are being hosted by the excellent new Camelot gallery above the cafe of the same name. (For a full programme, please click on the Source link below).

However, as with last year, a number of the most interesting exhibitions are being held in Kazimierz, long the favourite stomping ground of Cracow's artistic set.

Look out for events at venues such as Alchemia, and also the Gazeta Wyborcza exhibition (one of Poland's leading newspapers) at the Jewish Cultural Centre on Meiselsa street.

Many of the venues double as cafes and bars, which adds a congenial flavour to the festival - if an exhibition turns out to be complete rubbish, you can console yourself with a coffee or something a little stronger.

If you love photography and you're visiting Cracow over the next few weeks, it would be a great shame to miss two other exhibitions that are completely unconnected to the festival, but well worth seeing.

Both are entirely different, one rather happy clappy, the other serious, although both are beautifully shot, with an intuitive feel for the beauty of nature, as well as that of the man-made landscape.

The first is an exhibition at the Manggha Centre celebrating five years of the Polish edition of National Geographic. This runs until Tuesday 9th November.

The second exhibition, 'Traces of Memory', can be found at the newly opened Galicia Museum in Kazimierz. This presents the fruit of ten years work by distinguished photographer Chris Schwarz. His subject is the Jewish heritage of this region of Poland. It's a masterpiece.

The Month of Photography itself commences in Podgorze at leading modern art gallery Starmach. They're hosting an exhibition by Marek Piasecki which opens at 6pm on Monday 23rd October. (Click below for more info).

We hope that you enjoy the festival - the programme looks a fine one!