“The Kashubian Wedding According to I. Gulgowski” is the first photographic album in Poland created entirely using the ambrotype process, telling the story of a traditional Kashubian wedding – from matchmaking and preparations, through the marriage ceremony, to the wedding celebration itself.
The project was created in cooperation with the Museum – Kashubian Ethnographic Park of Teodora and Izydor Gulgowski in Wdzydze Kiszewskie. Its starting point was the writing of Izydor Gulgowski, describing the life, customs and traditions of historic Kashubia.
The album opens with an introduction by Krzysztof Jurecki – art historian, critic and photography curator, who places Radosław Brzozowski’s project within a broader photographic and artistic context.
A photograph that might never have existed
One of the key ideas behind the project was to use a photographic technique appropriate to the historical period to which the story refers.
By the mid-19th century, photography already existed and was developing rapidly. However, everyday life in Kashubian villages – and even more so an entire rural wedding, including the preparations, matchmaking and successive rituals – was never documented photographically in this form.
The project therefore grew out of a question:
what might a photographic story of a Kashubian wedding have looked like if a photographer had arrived there at the time with a camera and wet glass plates?
For this reason, all photographs were made using the wet collodion process, as ambrotypes on glass. This is not simply a contemporary visual imitation of historic photography. The photographic process itself dates from the 19th century and imposes a working method characteristic of the period: preparing the plate immediately before taking the photograph, long exposure times and processing the plate while it is still wet.
In this way, the photographic technique became an integral part of the story.
One wedding – the whole story
The album is not a collection of individual portraits styled to resemble old photographs.
It is a continuous photographic narrative of a wedding.
The story begins long before the marriage ceremony itself. It includes the matchmaking of the young couple, preparations made by their families and households, everyday activities preceding the celebration, and the preparation of clothing and the wedding setting. The narrative then follows the successive stages of the wedding – the bride and groom, their families, guests, the ceremony and the shared celebration.
As a result, the project is not merely a reconstruction of a single event, but an attempt to recreate the entire social world surrounding a traditional wedding celebration.
Reconstructing a Kashubian wedding
The project required months of preparation and the cooperation of many people. The work included:
- analysing Izydor Gulgowski’s texts and ethnographic sources,
- consulting museum staff,
- preparing costumes, props and locations,
- reconstructing successive elements of traditional wedding customs,
- preparing the complete photographic process based on wet collodion photography.
The models were museum employees and members of their families, and the photographs were made within the grounds of the Kashubian Ethnographic Park in Wdzydze.
The culmination of the project was three intensive days of photography, during which a visual narrative was created covering the entire sequence of events – from everything that preceded the wedding to the celebration itself.
Ambrotype as part of the narrative
The photographs were made by hand on glass plates using the ambrotype – wet collodion process.
The characteristic material quality of the image, traces left by the process, the way light is rendered and the limitations of 19th-century photographic technology mean that the photographs do not merely depict the reconstructed world – they also belong to its historical time.
The original ambrotypes are individual, unique photographic objects. In the album, they have been brought together into a single narrative, allowing the project to be experienced as a story – from the first preparations to the end of the wedding celebration.
Album contributors
- Photography and concept: Radosław Brzozowski
- Texts: Radosław Brzozowski, based on the writings of Izydor Gulgowski
- Introduction: Krzysztof Jurecki
- Museum cooperation: Museum – Kashubian Ethnographic Park of Teodora and Izydor Gulgowski in Wdzydze Kiszewskie
Publication details
- Number of pages: 144
- Language: Polish and English
- Photographic technique: ambrotype / wet collodion
- Photographer: Radosław Brzozowski
What makes this album unique?
“The Kashubian Wedding According to I. Gulgowski” brings together historical photography, ethnography and the reconstruction of traditional customs.
It is not an attempt to create contemporary photographs “in an old-fashioned style”. Rather, it is an attempt to construct a photographic record that never existed – a visual story of an event that could have been photographed in the 19th century, but for which no such photographic documentation has survived.
By combining a historical photographic process, museum research and the reconstruction of successive stages of the wedding, the album becomes at once an artistic, photographic and ethnographic project.
