Arts&Ideas

Trams are Krakow fixtures that get thousands of people to work, school or shopping every day and that charm visitors whose cities lack them.

Between May 4-31, Krakow will drown in photos. It is all because of the annual festival of photography, Photomonth, one of the most important events for photographers worldwide. Organized for the fifth time this year, Photomonth will gather some of the best known artists like Martin Parr, Anders Petersen, Oliver Sieber, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.

From April 27-May 13, the interactive Space Adventure exhibition at Galeria Krakowska (the city?s largest mall located near the railway station) offers visitors an interactive crash course in modern astronautics.

A unique photographic exhibition near Galeria Krakowska showing people from Krakow pictured by the reporters of Gazeta Wyborcza.

Commercial, artistic and theatrical posters showing the best works of both Polish and foreign artists are on exhibit in five places around the center of Krakow.

Michael Stabb, curator of Appearance/Disappearance -- A German Album, Photography from the Federal State of North-Rhine-Westphalia, asked seven photographers born in the 1960?s and 1970?s to participate in the exhibition.

This week the Alchemia Pub presents two interesting musical events -- a silent film with live music and a concert by alternative group Plazmatikon -- as part of Krakow?s Festival of Alternative Art ? Alchemia Off Art.

Jacques Henri Lartigue, regarded today as one of the world?s greatest masters of photography, was practically unknown to his contemporaries.

In Potocka Gallery on April 26-June 15, we can see the new project of a most interesting young Polish artist -- Hubert Czerepok. The title of this exhibition, Strange Tourists, refers to an odd event that happened in 1978 in the small Polish village Emilcin.

Jacek Malinowski?s art balances between reality and the lie. He makes quasi-documentary films in which average people tell stories about their life and problems. The images presented by the artist are never authentic. We sense the discrepancy, but it is difficult to determine the edge of truth and the reasons for our disorientation.