Jurek Wajdowicz


Jurek Wajdowicz is a Polish-born American artist, graphic designer, fine art contemporary photographer and art director. He lives and works in New York City.
Wajdowicz concentrates on images of poverty, famine, social inequality and violence in his typographic designs to more tranquil contemplative images in his art photography. From 2009, Wajdowicz has focused on fine art abstract photography resulting in several ongoing thematic series. His book, Liminal Spaces was published in 2013. Some of his recent work was represented at the Kasia Michalski Gallery in Warsaw, Poland 2015, the Vienna contemporary art fair in Vienna, Austria 2015, Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York in 2016, and Book Art Museum in Lodz, Poland 2018. Wajdowicz was selected as one of the "Most Influential Graphic Designers of the Past 50 Years" in the 50th Anniversary Survey of Graphic Design: USA magazine.

Life and career

Wajdowicz began his career as an artist in Lodz, Poland, where he graduated summa cum laude with a master's degree in graphic design from the Lodz Academy of Fine Arts. After working on design projects for theaters and museums in Lodz, Warsaw and England, he went to the United States as an art director at Lubalin, Burns & Company in New York before co-founding Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios with Lisa LaRochelle in 1982. EWS' partners and clients include international humanitarian organizations and non-profit institutions active in social change. From the 1990s to the present Wajdowicz and EWS created projects for the Rockefeller Foundation, Domtar, Doctors Without Borders, the Arcus Foundation, International Rescue Committee, Magnum Photos, Freedom House and the United Nations, working with photographers such as Eugene Richards, Sebastião Salgado, Steve McCurry, Antonin Kratochvil, Deborah Turbeville, Philip Jones Griffiths, Richard Avedon, Elliott Erwitt, Jonas Bendiksen, James Nachtwey, Alex Webb and Gueorgui Pinkhassov. From 2013 Jurek Wajdowicz became the art director, curator and also a contributing photographer of the international LGBT-themed, photography books, a concept co-created by Jon Stryker and Wajdowicz. The ongoing series is published by The New Press including photojournalists Kike Arnal, Misha Friedman, Sunil Gupta, Maciek Nabrdalik, Jenny Papalexandris and Charan Singh.

Publications

Publications by Wajdowicz

Wajdowicz's art photography and design work is held in the following permanent collections: