Źródła obrazowe w badaniach dziejów pomorskich prof. Tadeusza Białeckiego

The article is an analysis of Professor Tadeusz Białecki’s cartographic works: plans, maps and iconographic works made with the use of artistic and photographic techniques, presenting the cultural and natural countryside of Pomerania within the administrative borders fi xed after 1945. Therefore, the territory of the New March has been partially included in the article. The article has been arranged according to the chronology of Professor Białecki’s publications. The analysis comprises books, articles, encyclopaedic entries, and reviews. This selection has been made on the basis of bibliographical list – compiled by Maria Frankel – of the Professor’s works written before 2003, supplemented with a bibliographical survey of his works published in the years 2004–2012. At the beginning the article explains why Professor Białecki took up producing pictorial works (pictorial works were the result of his interests in photography and sightseeing) and assesses the value of that part of his achievements as a historian. Next, Professor Białecki’s individual publications were analysed in order to fi nd their formal and material connections. Pictorial sources played various roles in Professor Białecki’s publications; usually, they fulfi lled an auxiliary function: fi rstly, enriching illustrated texts; secondly, together with the written texts they created the full narrative; thirdly, individual works, such as maps of Szczecin, became themselves objects of analysis; and fi nally, sets of works created a narrative tissue, to which the written texts were explicatory commentaries. An example of the last function were the albums, and fi rst of all the monograph concerning the sights of Szczecin. At the end of the article it is underlined that pictorial sources have been used by Professor Białecki throughout his activity as a historian and populariser of the Pomeranian history and region.