An Unlikely Setting: Street Photography at Lewków Palace

On a bright spring morning, Lewków Palace feels like the last place you’d expect to find street photography — all calm parkland, birdsong, and careful restoration.

I took a spin up to Ostrów Wielkopolski last week to see an exhibition of street photography at Lewków Palace. Set just outside the town, the palace is a late 18th-century neoclassical residence, originally built for the Lipski family and now carefully restored as a cultural centre. The surrounding parkland is calm and quiet, with winding paths, ponds, and clusters of mature trees that must have many tales to tell.

The grounds were full of gentle activity: birdsong carried across the lawns while volunteers worked methodically — raking leaves, scrubbing handrails, planting new shrubs. It seems an unlikely setting for an exhibition of urban street photography — all order, calm, and soft greenery.

The Exhibition Space

The exhibition is being held (until April 19th) in the “large conservatory” in one of the garden buildings. It’s a smart choice of venue. The glass walls and roof provide near-perfect natural light, with the pictures printed on board meaning no reflections despite the light from all directions

It features work from several Polish collectives including Z Bliska, Unrecognised and Streetwise, wih many familiar names from the Polish street scene. Charalamposa Kidonakisa (t.a. @dirtyharrry) is the featured guest artist, with one of his images forming the backdrop for the publicity material above.
My favourite contemporary Polish photographer, Marcin Urbanowicz, also appears with four images.

A Democratic Hang

Each photographer contributes between one and five images, all printed in a consistent format and quality. It’s a simple curatorial decision, but an effective one — no single image dominates, and each is given equal weight. With around 100 photographs on display, the show feels balanced, accessible and aspirational rather than highbrow and hierarchical.

What the Work Shows

Almost all of the work falls into “straight street” — photographs that show the world as it is: colourful, chaotic, usually messy. There are only a handful of black-and-white images and a couple of more abstract pieces, while a few documentary-style shots broaden the mix without disrupting it.

Most of the work is made in Poland, though a small number of images come from trips abroad.

The Moments That Land

As with the best street photography, there are several genuine laugh-out-loud moments — those split-second alignments of gesture, expression and coincidence that only a patient eye can catch. These sit alongside quieter, more reflective images, giving the exhibition a natural rhythm as you walk around the room.

I really enjoyed it — not just by the quality of the work, but by finding something like this so close to home rather than having to head to Warsaw.

Lewków Palace clearly has an active and varied programme, and it’s a place worth keeping an eye on.

Ostrow Wielkopolski

From the palace, I drove the few kilometres into Ostrów Wielkopolski itself. Like many Polish towns of its size, it’s a mixture of Soviet-era housing blocks, a restored town square, railway lines and yards, bits of old industry and newer retail on the edges.

I was only there for less than an hour and, as usual, wandered a little off the main streets — into courtyards, along sidings and past the edges of factories that sit outside the everyday flow of the town.