How often do we find ourselves remembering an episode or an event only after seeing a photograph of it again? And how, once that memory resurfaces, it can bring others back with it, other memories. Photography has profoundly changed the way we preserve memories, fixing moments, people, and places in time.

But what happens when, instead of another memory, there is a void and the chain is broken?
It is from this reflection that photographer and landscape architect Marta Wojnarowska-Olszewska developed the project Forget-me-nots bloom in January. The project stems from a reality the artist herself has had to confront: her mother’s diagnosis of dementia. Faced with questions for which there were no answers, Wojnarowska-Olszewska turned to photography as a means of confronting what was happening to her mother and, in turn, to her own life. The artist herself explains: “My artistic practice is rooted in photography as a tool for exploring personal and shared experiences. I am interested in how individual stories connect to wider social and emotional contexts and how they can be translated into visual language.”

How does memory work? If human beings are shaped by the experiences they have lived through, what happens when they can no longer remember them? What happens to one’s identity when one can no longer remember who they are, or who they have been up to that point?
Forget-me-nots bloom in January is much more than a photographic project: it is a reflection on what remains of us when memory begins to fade.
The artist retrieves images from her family archive and, together with her mother—thus making her a co-author—marks, writes on, cuts, and reworks them. Through these gestures, the loss and transformation of memories become tangible. In an attempt to trace the small shifts, gestures, and everyday mistakes that might otherwise go unnoticed, she photographed seemingly insignificant fragments of reality, such as a cup filled with tea from which a drop spills, leaving a trail behind. Nothing extraordinary, and yet, in its own way, extraordinarily powerful. The drop spreads further and further, soaking the tablecloth, which will in turn wet the hand that, moments later, reaches for the cup. Is this how memories work? Do they disperse in this way? Through a small escape route, a thin boundary line, they gradually disappear.
Wojnarowska-Olszewska has portrayed her mother in an attempt to preserve her image and presence, both in photography and in memory. These are intimate, almost silent photographs, through which the warmth of the bond between mother and daughter can be felt.
Forget-me-nots bloom in January becomes a testimony to an intimate experience and a universal fear: that of losing one’s memory and, along with it, oneself. The artist’s photographs thus become like the small blue flowers evoked in the title: a reminder to remember, and a desire to leave a trace of oneself.

Image: Marta Wojnarowska-Olszewska, Forget-Me-Nots Bloom in January, 2022
From the series Forget-Me-Nots Bloom in January. Photography, archival print on acid-free paper, Fogra Certificate 28681, 30 × 45 cm.
© Marta Wojnarowska-Olszewska. All rights reserved.

Marta Wojnarowska-Olszewska’s project Forget-me-nots bloom in January won the Conceptual Photography category at the 2026 FotoSlovo International Photography Awards.

30/09/26