Who is Zofia Nasierowska? Google Doodle Pays Tribute To Polish Photographer
Internationally-renowned Polish photographer Zofia Nasierowska is being honoured as the subject of today’s Google Doodle, on what would have been the artist’s 85th birthday.
Considered one of the most influential photographers of her era in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Nasierowska was best known for her black-and-white portrait photographs of famous Polish personalities from the realm of arts and culture.
These included film directors Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda and Polish film stars Beata Tyszkiewicz, Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
Born in 1938 in Łomianki, 14km outside of Warsaw, Nasierowska would end up following in the footseps of her father Euegeniusz Nasierowski, himself a famous photographer, who started teaching his daughter photography from a young age.
She took her first photograph at the age of seven and participated in her first photography exhibition at the age of 11.
But it was later when she enrolled at the Leon Schiller National Film School in Łódź, known today as the prestigous Łódź Film School, that Nasierowska’s career as a portrait photographer began to take shape, with many of her classmates, many of whom are now considered among the most significant figures in Polish culture.
In recognition of Nasierowska’s talent, at the age of 18, she was invited to become a member of the Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików (ZPAF, or the Association of Polish Art Photographers) and was inducted into the International Federation of Photographic Art.
But it is widely seen that her career was launched in 1958 with a portrait photograph of actress Lucyna Winicka, which was chosen to feature on the cover of ‘Ekran’ (eng tran. ‘Screen’) magazine.
After that moment, Nasierowska’s photographs came to be regularly featured as covers for a number of different magazines and publciations throughout the 1960s and 70s, including Ekran, Zwierciadło and Przekrój.
Though Nasierowska also photographed landscapes and did reportages, she kept coming back to portraits, for which she held a particular passion and came to be known for her portraits of Warsaw’s artistic sphere, with everyone wanting to have their picture taken by her.
In addition, Nasierwoska was known for her warm and welcoming personality, which helped to put her models at ease and drew out the right atmosphere for each shot.
Nasierowska’s photos won her numerous international awards including at exhibitions in Glasgow, London, Stockholm, Budapest and Karlove Very and she was honoured with the Artiste FIAP title awarded by the International Federation of Photographic Art.
After her death in 2011, after a long illness, Nasierowska was buried in Poland’s prestigous Powazki Military Cemetery in the western part of Warsaw on the Avenue of the Deserved, an area reserved for the graves of Poland’s most eminent writers, artists, scholars, politicians, doctors, entrepreneurs and social activists from across the ages.