Rafał Milach

From September 22, 2023 to January 1, 2024, the Museum Folkwang will be showing photographs, videos from The Archive of Public Protests by Polish photographer Rafał Milach. Part of the archive was acquired for the Museum Folkwang collection with funds from the Stiftung Presse-Haus NRZ. The photographs, videos and publications address political and social problems in Poland from 2015 to the present. The exhibition juxtaposes visual activism practices of the Magnum photographer with press images from the Girardet Photo Archive.

Rafał Milach (b. 1978) is the initiator and co-founder of The Archive of Public Protests (the A-P-P in short) collective of photographers, activists, writers, sociologists and visual artists. The Archive brings together visual traces of social activism, grassroots initiatives opposing not just political decisions but also breaches of democratic norms and human rights. It is a collection of images that constitutes a warning against rising right-wing populism and discrimination in the broadest sense of the term: xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and also the climate crisis. Founded in 2019 A-P-P collects protest related visual materials since the right-wing populist government lead by the PiS (Law and Justice) took over the power in Poland. The 18 A-P-P members gather together photographs in a single, easily accessible collection, which will remain accessible to researchers, artists and activists. Additionally, use of the Archive’s resources will be open to all users, who express a desire to communicate the values with which its creators identify. The protests visible in the exhibition demand a right to abortion and to bodily and sexual self-determination; solidarity with Belarusian opposition and with Ukraine, which is under attack from Russia; an independent judiciary; and sustainable climate and humane refugee policies.

Rafał Milach does not pursue any claim to journalistic objectivity for his photographic works within the A-P-P and instead consciously allies with the oppressed communities. In his photographs, Milach often focuses on the faces of individuals who have themselves become icons of the protest movements in Poland. The Strike Newspapers published by the collective and distributed at the protest perform both images and protester’s slogans. The newspapers are the physical extension of an online A-P-P resource. 

On September 21, 2023, seventeen photographs and bold slogans will be wallpapered on the exhibition walls as large-scale posters, thus transferring the aesthetics of public space into the museum. The immersive installation with photographs, videos and typographic slogans will make the activist power of the protest’s tangible for the public.

The exhibition juxtaposes the new acquisition of The Archive of Public Protests with selected press prints from the Girardet Photo Archive. The collection from the former Essen publishing house comprises around 100,000 photographs and has been part of the Photographic Collection at the Museum Folkwang since 1989 as a permanent loan from the Ruhr University Bochum. Using the example of protest photographs, especially from the 1950s, the distribution channels of the press prints are traced on the basis of the marked backs. The differences in content and structure between the activist form of protest and Girardet's publishing structures are put into relation.

Admission: free