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SHORT NOTES

Anna Kowalska, Dzienniki 1927-1969 [Diaries 1927-1969], cd. Paweł Kądziela, Warszawa 2008, Iskry, 579 pp., ills., index, annex

Anna Kowalska (nee Chrzanowska), a writer and philologist, was born Lwów in 1903. In the 1920s, during her studics at thc Univcrsity, she met hcr futurę husband, Jerzy Kowalski, a professor of classical philology. Until the outbrcak of the Great War they worked together and spent much time travelling in Europę. The notes madę during the inter-war period were irrcgular. It is only from 1943 that Kowalska gave a systematie account of practically every day; this is why the manuscript version of her diary is very extensive. Her descriptions and reflec-tions focus on social and society life, political events and personal expericnces. Kowalska devotes a great deal of space to Maria Dąbrowska (1889-1965) with whom she was linked by intimate emotional ties. The two writers lived together in Warsaw from 1954.

It took several years to prepare the manuscript before it could be put into print. Paweł Kądziela has equipped the diary with notes and with a chronicie of Kowalska’s life and works. The diary is preceded by an introduction written by Julia Hartwig. The manuscript is kept at the Museum of Literaturę in Warsaw. (OL)

Klisze przechowuje się. Stefania Gurdowa [The Negatives Are To Be Stored: Stefania Gurdowa], Kraków 2008, Fundacja Imago Mundi, Muzeum Etnograficzne im. Seweryna Udzieli, ‘czysty warsztat', 220 pp., phots.

An interesting exhibition entitled The negatives are to be stored* was held in Cracow in May 2008 in the Photography Month. On view were portraits of pre-war inhabitants of Dębica and its environs (before the war Dębica was in Cracow province). They were persons of different age and different social status who lived in the smali towns and villages of Galicia. The photographs were taken by Stefania Gurdowa, an artistic photographer born in Bochnia in 1888. Gurdowa was educatcd in Bochnia and Lwów. From 1923 to 1937 she ran her own studio in Dębica. She died in 1968. During the liquidation of her fiat, her photographic archivc was thrown into a dustbin. In 1997 over a thousand ncgativcs in a rather bad State were found in the wali of an attic in thc house in which Gurdowa had her studio before the war. Most of them were portraits, some showed vicws of the town. Only a part of the collcction has bccn studied and madę accessible so far. The album published in an English-Polish version is supplemented with tcxts by the anthropologist Dariusz Czaja, the photographer Jerzy Lcwczyński and Agnieszka Sabor, a journalist an art historian who helped to organize the exhibition. De-tailed information on this venture, its history and the exhibition (in Polish and English) can be found on the Internet: http://www.gurdowa.pl/ (OL)