“May ’81” – Virtual photography exhibition by Chris Schwarz

Chris Schwarz was a British photographer, founder, and the first director of the Galicia Jewish Museum.

Since the early 1990s, he photographed traces of Jewish heritage in Poland, expressions of interest in Jewish culture, and signs of Jewish life reemerging decades after the Holocaust. The photos he took during this period form the core of the museum’s permanent exhibition.

However, Chris’s first visit to Poland took place a decade earlier. He came as an independent photojournalist in May 1981, aiming to capture the reality of a communist state where the “Solidarity” movement had emerged less than a year earlier.