Władysław Hasior's Photographic Archive Examines Environmental Impact of Polish Socialism

A scholarly article by Karolina Kolenda, published on August 24, 2025, analyzes the work of Polish neo-avant-garde artist Władysław Hasior (1928–1999) through an environmental lens. The article focuses on Hasior's extensive photographic archive, known as the Photo Notebook, which contains over twenty thousand diapositives organized into thematic sets produced from the mid-1960s until his death. Key series include 'Roadside Poetry,' documenting propagandistic signs in the landscape, and sets like 'Trees' and 'Tragedy of Trees,' which depict ecological degradation. Hasior's performances, particularly 'Ecological Alarm' (initially titled 'The Burning Tree'), begun in 1982, explicitly address environmental concerns. The article situates Hasior's practice within the context of rising ecological awareness in socialist Poland during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when information about pollution was often censored. It argues that his photographs and performances critically document the anthropogenic transformation of the Polish landscape under socialism, offering a visual record of its environmental costs. Hasior, based in Zakopane, was a major figure in Polish postwar art, known for assemblages and public sculptures. The article references related scholarly works by Magdalena Worłowska, Magdalena Figzał-Janikowska, and Ewa Tatar, and is part of a special issue on the Socialist Anthropocene in visual arts.