Zofia Raczkowska

One of the most famed artistic photographers of horses. An authoress of many cult photographs from Janów Podlaski, Michałów and Białka. An art dreamer (www.pcbj.pl).

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Born on March 21, 1932 in Warsaw. She died on April 27, 2013 in Warsaw. She is buried in the cemetery in Komorów.

She was interested in photograph already at the beginning of 1960s. At first, her preferences included the nearest ambiance and the family life. However, eftsoon, she was fascinated by press photo, especially photo essay. She published pictures at daily press and magazines. Within the circle of publishers, she became well-known as a nature and animal photographer and, first of all, a horse photographer.

Thanks to her passion and fascination in Arabian horse beauty, she collected the richest archive of pictures of this breed horses bred in Poland within thirty years.

She has many publications in her achievements. The photos from the first period of her activity appeared successively within 1973-1975, in albums ‘Pferde, Pferde’, ‘Araber Pferde’ and ‘Aus meinem Tieralbum’ published by Sudwest, the West German publishing house.

In eighties, a breakthrough took place in her work style. Under pressure of publishers, she decided to use a colour photography. It was a difficult decision, because she was accustomed to work at her own darkroom while creating black and white photos and now, she was forced to deal with a colour photography process.

Soon, her photos became recognizable thanks to specific, pictorial colouring. Due to initiative shown by German and Swiss publishers, she started cooperating with them permanently. The calendars published at these markets popularized her photography. She used to win main prizes at European contests of these editorial forms. Besides participation in many international shows, she presented her works at the individual exhibitions in Colombia (1983), Denmark (1985), Sweden (1985) and in Poland – at the gallery of Polish Artistic Photographers Association in Warsaw (1990). Also, in 1990, she got “Grand Prix” at the international show ‘Horses of the World’ in Riga.

For 20 years, she was an author of photos to catalogues of the famous Arabian horse auctions yielded profits. In 1992, her author’s album ‘Arabians” was issued.

She spent a lot of time at Scandinavia. In Sweden, she dealt with pure-bred Arabian horses first of all. Since 1996, she participated in summer horse pasturages in Norway on regular basis while taking pictures of Fiord Horses, Döle horses and ponies in the mountains. On the turn 2001/2002, at the gallery of Polish Artistic Photographers Association in Warsaw, the retrospective exhibition of her works “World full of horses” took place.

Author: Hanna Łysakowska

Click to see the entry about the artist at Polish Digital Equestrian Library