Fotografia na tropie PRL
Photography on the Track of the People’s Republic of Poland

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with Polish photographic projects, from before June 1989 as well as from the times after the political transformation, which have oftentimes avoided any interpretation of the recorded images. The author is interested in the way the photographers treat the socialist motives or objects associated with the former times (with particular stress on the external visual propaganda). The problems with a verist depiction of a subject, caused to an extent by a rather low level of Polish photographic education, as well as the difficulty of finding a proper tradition for such an activity (lack of local equivalent of the “new topography”), have lead to projects where the reality of the pre 1989 and the history as such is at the best ironically bracketed, thus disabling any analysis or interpretation of historical and social character.

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