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Traces (1982)

A conceptual cycle enclosed in just 7 photographs, presenting photomontages in which the artist used her photographic portraits and self-portraits.

Zofia Rydet confronts her own passing and death in it.

The later cycle “Traces” refers quite directly to the issue of the presence of the absent in photography. It is very personal because it concerns her own presence after death. Approaching the end of her life, she creates a poignant series of photomontages in which she almost obsessively multiplies her own image in the context of her home surroundings. Zofia Rydet creates photographs in which her presence is revealed only through a photographic portrait. Her image is present only in accumulated photographs, crowded in a space in which there is no longer a living person, which is empty, lifeless. Only the photographs remain... “Traces” become a moving testimony to the need of the image, to the power of its influence transcending death. They show that Zofia Rydet felt a great need for presence through the photographic image, a need which intensifies the closer we get to leaving this world.

Karol Jóźwiak, Inwentaryzacja wizerunków a