Monidło na tle przemian kultury ludowej
Monidło in the context of changes in folk culture

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses hand-retouched photographs called monidło which have become emblematic of the Polish rural and small-town iconosphere. In the text the phenomenon’s origins are outlined, derived from traditional folk culture in the wake of great social and economic changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, caused by the enfranchisement of peasants, industrialization, migra- tion of the rural population to cities and the possibility of social advancement. Practices of creating and distributing monidło and the social reality in which those paintings existed are described. The case of monidło is meant to prove how in communist Poland the judgement of taste conceived after Pierre Bourdieu was used as a tool of social distinction. The final section attempts to identify the reasons why the subject of monidło has been long overlooked in scholarly discourse.

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