As a result, in line with the title, the exhibition deceives us, and photographs flicker before our eyes in an unpredictable manner, like a swarm of insects. Kamila Bondar and Łukasz Rusznica programmatically withdraw here from defining and summarising and even from any form of describing the projects displayed. The title, which sounds like a pretentious quote from a poem in the spirit of Rupi Kaur, turns out to be a purely authorial invention, and individual exhibition rooms are accompanied only by phrases in a similar vein, such as Młodość podpala świece (Youth Sets Candles on Fire) or Gasną światła, zasłoń lustra, przytul się do chłodu (Lights Are Fading, Cover the Mirrors, Burrow Against the Cold). Individual photographs are accompanied only by authors’ descriptions, but the viewer is left without any narrative that would bind them all and justify the choices that are made. Mine Eyes Bees Deceive, then, is a project that, on the one hand, is promoted as ‘the first such large cross-sectional exhibition of Polish photography in many years’; on the other hand, the curatorial duet declares at the outset that they ‘are as vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of the image as any other person’ (translation source). 

The first statement is true. Except for individual exhibitions by artists employing this medium, photography hasn’t been represented particularly well in the major Polish institutions. The last cross-sectional exposition referred to in the context of the one at the Ujazdowski Castle is Efekt czerwonych oczu. Fotografia polska XXI wieku (The Red-Eye Effect: Polish Photography of the 21st Century), curated by Adam Mazur in the same location in 2008. Since that time, an entire era has passed, not only within the field of photography. At major photography festivals in Kraków, Łódź and Wrocław, one could follow how reality and the photographs that describe it have changed over the course of these years, since these events have been extensive enough to hold space both for shows by international stars and entire sections devoted to novice photographers. They are mostly the ones that have shaped hierarchies and the discourse taking place during that time, alongside galleries devoted to photography – led by the Archaeology of Photography Foundation (Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii) and Fort Institute of Photography (Instytut Fotografii Fort) in Warsaw, and Miejsce przy Miejscu 14 (Place by Place 14) in Wrocław. This last one, transformed last year into the Archiwum Słońca (Sun Archive) publishing house, was created by none other than Łukasz Rusznica.