In 1997, following the death of Zofia Rydet, the Archive was moved from the Artist’s apartment in Gliwice to Rabka—first to the Rydet family home, and later to the Augustyński family home. In 2000, together with the relocating family, the Archive was transferred to Kraków. Between 2000 and 2010, the Archive was open to all interested parties. Photographs, documents, and expertise were made available, supporting the creation of articles, publications, academic research, and exhibitions. In 2011, in response to suggestions from the artistic community and the need to shift work on the Archive to a professional model, the Zofia Rydet Foundation was established. Although Zofia Rydet passed away, the collection has remained alive and active continuously since 1997.
The foundational stage of the Foundation’s work is the inventorying and digitisation of the Collection, undertaken to preserve and safeguard this invaluable artistic legacy for future generations. This process requires an enormous investment of time and effort (representing 40 years of the Artist’s work). The work has been divided into stages corresponding to individual creative cycles. This phase forms the groundwork for the comprehensive scholarly study of the entire Collection and constitutes a crucial moment in which a fresh perspective and a contemporary interpretation of Rydet’s work are essential.
At the beginning of the Foundation’s activities, a key source of intellectual and artistic support was Andrzej Różycki—an artist, friend, and the creator of an outstanding film about Zofia Rydet. Thanks to his initiative, exhibitions combining the work of both artists were created, including Fotoandrzejozofia and Scissors and Zofia Rydet. These projects demonstrated that Rydet’s work remains deeply inspiring and can continually be reinterpreted anew. Between 2012 and 2020, thanks to successive grants from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, we carried out inventory, archival, and digitisation work covering all the most important photographs by Zofia Rydet held in our Archive—over 45,000 negatives. Since its inception, the Foundation has established collaborations with numerous institutions and individuals connected with culture in Poland and abroad, including: the Silesian Museum, the Archeology of Photography Foundation, the Visual Arts Foundation, Czytelnia Sztuki in Gliwice, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Photography in Kraków, Raster Gallery, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Art in Łódź, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the Jeu de Paume Gallery in Paris, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, The Wende Museum in California, Calvert 22 Gallery in London, and the New York Museum in New York. From the very beginning, the Foundation has organised and co-organised numerous exhibitions of Zofia Rydet’s work, as well as other initiatives promoting her artistic legacy, both in Poland and internationally. We are also involved in charitable activities (including the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, Wielkie Serce, Artists for Olinek, and the Razem z Odwagą Foundation) and support scholarly and publishing initiatives. In 2024, thanks to the initiative and support of the Centre for Community Archives, the Sociological Record cycle was inscribed on Poland’s National UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
“(…) Many people believe that photography is not important. As a result, when a photographer dies, everything is thrown away. Four or five photographs are kept, because it is thought they might be used for exhibitions. And the rest—films, everything—goes into the trash. That is why I am so sensitive about this. I would very much like to make my own people aware of it; I keep telling them: remember that when I die, this will have value. (…) Do not throw all of this away.” In Andrzej Różycki’s film The Infinity of Distant Roads, Zofia Rydet speaks about her fear of passing, of death, and about her concern for what would happen to her work after she was gone. “Do not throw this away,” she says—entrusting us with the future of her artistic legacy. We did not throw it away, Auntie.