The Zofia Rydet Foundation exists since March 2011. It was founded by the artists family who are the owners of Zofia Rydet’s archives. After Zofia Rydet’s death the works have been repeatedly provided for several exhibitions, used in many artistic and educational publications. The foundation collaborated in the creation of articles, academic works about the artist and the new output for which her art was inspiration. Although Zofia Rydet passed away, the collection has ‘lived’ since 1997.
The primary task of the foundation is the inventory and digitization of the Collection in order to consolidate and preserve for posterity the priceless artistic legacy. This process will require great effort and time (40 years of the artists work) and has been divided into stages according to specific series of photographs. It is the first step to the essential elaboration of the whole Collection and also a key moment of refreshing and modernizing the interpretation of Zofia Rydet’s work.
At the beginning of its operation, Andrzej Różycki – an artist, friend and creator of a wonderful film about Zofia Rydet – was a very important substantive support for the Foundation. Thanks to him, exhibitions were created that combine the work of both Artists: Photoandrzejosophia and Scissors and Zofia Rydet, projects showing that Rydet’s work is still inspiring and can be looked at again and again.
In the years 2012-2020, thanks to further subsidies from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, we conducted inventory and archiving works as well as digitization of all the most important photographs of Zofia Rydet in our archive, over 30,000 negatives.
From the beginning, we have established cooperation with many institutions and people of culture in Poland and abroad (including the Silesian Museum, the Archeology of Photography Foundation, the Foundation for Visual Arts, the Art Reading Room in Gliwice, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Photography in Krakow, the Gallery Raster, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, MOCAK, Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Galeria Jeu de Paume in Paris, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, The Wende Museum in California, Galeria Calvert 22 London, New York Museum New York).
Since its inception, the Foundation has organized and co-organized a series of exhibitions of Zofia Rydet’s works and other activities promoting her work, both in Poland and abroad. We also run charity and support all scientific and publishing activities.
“(…) A number of people believe that photography is not important. When a photographer passes away (…) everything he or she had done is thrown away. 4-5 pictures are retained, because everyone thinks they will be used for the exhibition. The rest such as: films, everything goes in the garbage. That is why I am very oversensitive. I wanted to sensitize people from my family and I say to them over and over again: (…) remember that when I die, it will have a value. (…) Do not trash it all. Zofia Rydet in Andrzej Różycki’s film Endlessly Distant Roads talks about her fear of passing time, death and the fear of what will happen to her work when she dies – “Do not throw it away” – she says – passing on the fate of her work to us. Dear Aunt, we did not throw them away… 
