I’m in No Hurry, Yet Time Is Running Out* Smoke over the Bieszczady: A Story of Passing Time

Charcoal was produced wherever extensive forests provided a ready supply of timber and made transport possible. At the height of this industry, several dozen charcoal-burning sites operated throughout the Bieszczady Mountains, with more than two hundred retorts in use. Over time, charcoal production survived almost exclusively in the Beskid and Bieszczady ranges. In recent years, however, it has begun to disappear not only as a feature of the landscape but also as a distinctive world of work, skills, and traditions associated with charcoal making.

The large production sites were the first to vanish, defeated by economic realities: rising timber prices and the import of cheaper charcoal from abroad. Only small operations, typically with just a handful of retorts, remained. The experienced charcoal burners also gradually disappeared. Their lives followed very different paths. For some, charcoal production provided a stable livelihood; for others, it became a life marked by solitude and addiction.

Presented at the Mieczysław Karłowicz Philharmonic in Szczecin, this exhibition is drawn from the photographic documentary project Charcoal Burners: Workers, Kilns and Charcoal Sites, created between 2020 and 2026 by Magdalena and Tomasz Seidler-Kumor together with their son Michał Kumor. Over seven years of work in the Bieszczady Mountains, the photographers produced more than 70,000 images using both digital and traditional silver-based photographic techniques.

The exhibition is an attempt to preserve the memory of a disappearing world – its people, their work, and their experience – which for decades formed an inseparable part of the landscape of the Bieszczady Mountains.

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An exhibition by Magdalena and Tomasz Seidler-Kumor, together with their son Michał Kumor
Curator: Katarzyna Szeszycka; Curatorial collaboration: Magdalena Seidler-Kumor

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Charcoal clamp – a traditional stack of timber sealed with earth or turf and used for producing charcoal.
Retort – a metal furnace, usually cylindrical in shape, used for producing charcoal under controlled conditions.
Charcoal-burning site – a place where charcoal is produced, equipped with one or more retorts.