Little Man was Zofia Rydet’s first extended photographic series, which she worked on in 1952–1963. The subjects of the photos taken in Poland, and in her travels around Europe and the Middle East (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Egypt and Lebanon), are children, captured in the convention of humanist photography. The psychologically deep portraits of “small people” document both the first post-war decades and the hopes placed in the new generation born just after the Holocaust and the end of the Second World War. The series culminated in a photo album under the same title, published in 1965 in the original graphic layout by Wojciech Zamecznik. Rydet’s photos are accompanied by passages chosen by Rydet herself from the writings of Janusz Korczak, the distinguished Polish-Jewish educator and children’s rights activist, who was murdered along with the children in his care in the Nazi camp at Treblinka in 1942.
from the Little Man series, 1961, gelatin silver print, 23.6 × 17.9 cm
from the Little Man series, 1959, gelatin silver print, 23.7 × 18 cm
from the Little Man series, 1958, gelatin silver print, 18 × 23.7 cm
from the Little Man series, 1959, gelatin silver print, 18.1 × 24 cm