Artist David Gledhill will be holding an exhibition of his photograph-inspired art entitled ‘Album: Paintings of Poland 1940-1941’ this month.

Little did he realise when he picked up a tiny photograph album that was lying in the road at a flea market in Frankfurt, it would contain images of a Jewish ghetto in Poland during the Second World War.

David, who is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Bolton, has spent the past year making paintings based on the photographsI’m always on the lookout for source material. I wanted to return something that was discarded and lost to a new living context.

‘The photographs themselves are tiny and grey and quite hard to make out whereas the paintings are large and have a different kind of impact.’

A group of German administrators are shown on a secondment to Sosnowiec in an area known at the time as Eastern Upper Silesia. They are seen on the steps of a café, swimming in a lake and enjoying supper together.

This part of Poland was the first to be invaded after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. At the time the photographs were taken, Jews had been instructed to wear armbands.

In the middle of the album are six photographs of Modrzejowska Street, a main thoroughfare that was included in an ‘open ghetto’ for the Jewish inhabitants of Sosnowiec and the surrounding area.

Gledhill said of his new work: ‘These photographs are a warning from history and I hope the paintings carry a message of tolerance. It seems incredible now that ordinary people could have become caught up with events like these.’

The exhibition runs from 17 February to 2 March in the Holden Side Gallery at Manchester School of Art.

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