Michał Cała
He was born in Toruń in 1948. After graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Warsaw University of Technology, he moved to Tychy, where he lived from 1977 to 1995. He was a member of the KRON Photographic Club operating in the city. His work focused on photographing the urban landscape and industry of Silesia. He has been a member of the Union of Polish Photographic Artists since 1983. He has received scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and Art (1983) and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2013). Ranked among the one hundred most important Polish photographers active in the C20th, he exhibited his work as part of the exhibition "Polish Photography in the 20th century" (2007). He currently lives in Bielsko-Biała. Silesia owes him a unique photographic profile in the form of two photographic series 'Silesia' (1978-1980) and "Silesia and Dąbrowa Basin" (2004-2012), which are not only 30 years apart, but above all mark the boundary between power and decline. While the former series shows "the monumental and rough beauty of mine heaps and fuming smelter and factory chimneys, as well as the working class estates nestled in their shadows' (Maria Lipok-Bierwiaczonek), the post-2000 photographs are a record of the destruction and deformation of the former landscape, and a way of elegising the declining Silesia. The artist donated to the Museum about 65 Tychy-themed photographs and fragments of his 'Silesia' series. Both collections include positives and digital images.