Gdynia through the lens of Edmund Zdanowski (336 objects)

The resources of the Gdynia City Museum include a large collection of over 700 negatives and over 400 positive prints by Edmund Zdanowski.

Most of them show Gdynia, the port and the city in the first twenty years after the World War II. It covers such themes as the port’s wartime destruction in the first years after World War II, May 1st marches or the port’s work including fishing port in the first years after the war.

A large part of the collection are negatives of the greeting of the ship, m.s. “Batory” in 1947, as well as the greeting of the ship m.s. “Krynica” bringing back the Wawel treasures from Canada in 1961 or farewell to “Dar Pomorza”, which set off on the first training voyage after World War II in 1946.

Edmund Zdanowski (1905-1984) and his wife Bolesława (1908-1982), who was also a photographer, settled permanently in Gdynia in 1945.

They started working at the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Gdynia Orłowo. Edmund Zdanowski organized and managed the Photography Department at this school.

Edmund came from Vilnius, where he was born and raised. He was a student of the famous photographer Jan Bułhak, whom he worked for. Before the war, he was an instructor at the Department of Artistic Photography at the Stefan Batory University. From 1934 he ran his own photo shop together with his wife in Vilnius.