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Poland in the 80's Through the Lens of French/Swiss Photographer Bruno Barbey
- trhway 8y agopolitical background at the time of the photos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1945%E2%80%931989)#Imposition_of_martial_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1945%E2%80%... That photo of Lenin with the "Solidarity" newspaper and a sign on the jacket - nice humor and is pretty telling that Poland definitely was rejecting the socialism as a foreign object :) edit: thank you, corrected the link
- jboxee 8y agoYou have a typo in your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1945%E2%80%931989)#Imposition_of_martial_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1945%E2%80%...
- conanthe 8y agoThis is wrong. "Solidarnosc" was more socialist than the ruling party! This common misconception. If you read their manifesto, you can see they wanted even more socialism. That movement was only about taking over. In 1988 communists started capitalist reforms similar to China, but fall of the Soviet Union gave politicians coming from the Solidarnosc a chance. First thing they did was reversing the free market reforms and moving Poland to be a socialist utopia it is today and wasting huge potential.
- trhway 8y ago>This is wrong. "Solidarnosc" was more socialist than the ruling party! yes, i know, and you're right in the sense that it is a bit more complicated than i originally said. The fall of real socialism in 198x in USSR was also associated with the part of society having that naive/romantic longing of "back to good socialism as it was originally envisioned by the great wise fuzzy warm grandpa Lenin" (never mind that Lenin was presiding over and directing the class- and political based genocide on the national scale as a natural part of his socialism) as opposed to supposedly incorrectly implemented real socialism of the time. So the Lenin explicitly embracing "Solidarity" artifacts on that photo is exactly the symbol of the same "back to and more of the good original socialism" and a rejection of that "wrong" real socialism. The catch of course is there is only one socialism, and it is not the "good one" as that just doesn't exist...
- mamon 8y agoActually, it's more complicated than that. "Solidarność" was a big organization, with different factions. The some of the members, like Andrzej Gwiazda, Anna Walentynowicz, Kornel Morawiecki, were more right-leaning, patriotic, fighting for independence. And then there were people like Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, Bronisław Geremek, who actually were communists by heart, in fact more dedicated to communist ideals than the ruling PZPR party.
- conanthe 8y agoThe truth is that they were infiltrated by the Germans and the US - they were not fighting for independence but to find new rulers. As the "Right wing" you mean national socialists - who want socialism only for a given group of people. True right (as in Libertarians) was ridiculed by the likes of Michnik.
- badpun 8y agoI grew up in Poland back then. Looking back at those photos, what is amazing is the serenity due to lack of advertising on the streets and on people's clothes. The world's visuals didn't scream at you back then (except for the occasional propagandist poster or banner, but these were not everywhere like today's advertising is). BTW later, when I was a young teenager in Poland's nineties, already under neoliberal capitalism, I dreamt of the commercials on TV being informative and helpful instead of the brainwashing puke they were (and still are). As an Amiga fanboy, I especially dreamt of a commercial campain that would convince people of Amiga's technical strengths :) Ah, the innocent years of youth.
- Lio 8y agoAs a fanboy of a different now defunct computer manufacturer from the same time period I also dreamed similarly about convincing people that my team was the right team. It seems crazy to me now. Not because they weren't really good products for the time but because I was hitching myself to a commercial organisation with its own agenda on everything. Unless you're a share holder cheering on a commercial organisation, as I did, is silly. If I could go back in time and speak to my younger self I'd point out that at least with FOSS you've as much right to the future of a project as anyone else. RMS really is correct on that.
- yostrovs 8y agoI grew up in the USSR and I dreamt of Lenin because he was as ever present as advertising and Jesus put together in the US. Huge red billboards were everywhere, with quotes from or about Lenin and the party he created. When commercials appeared, they at least seemed lively and exciting.
- agumonkey 8y agoWhat were the dreams about ? I don't know what it is to dream about a political figure
- Krasnol 8y agoHey, you missed the huge Polonez Ad on the wall there. The socialist Poland Mercedes!
- pjf 8y ago...a lens biased towards countryside, and that would require captions to better understand the meaning of photos, IMHO.
- dreta 8y agothere's no bias, the photos represent the general state of the whole country
- praptak 8y agoNo they don't. Source: growing up in said country during that era. There weren't that many horses then, even in the countryside. And they did have tractors. Plowing with a horse was a curiosity even in the eighties.
- dreta 8y agoi grew up in Poland too, east, and south-east looked like like this, or worse. where did you grow up? not everybody had a tractor, still had plenty of horses around, doesn't mean everybody used them, that'd be ridiculous
- Kurtz79 8y ago...which means that the pictures have a bias, and they don't represent the state of the whole country at the time. (not that there is anything wrong with it)
- praptak 8y agoWarsaw, with parts of family near Ciechanów and near Piła. No, not everybody had a tractor - that would be ineffective, given how many small family-owned farms there were. But they did use tractors and combine harvesters. TBH I don't know whether they were shared between neighbors or just unofficially borrowed(#) for a bottle of vodka from the state farms (PGR). (#)There's this Polish verb "załatwić" which I cannot properly translate to English. It means obtaining products or services using ones connections, cunning and possibly transfer of a usual token of appreciation as in "załatwić za flachę" (obtain something in exchange for a bottle of vodka).
- jetrink 8y agoThe following site has short captions for many of the photos: https://pro.magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/Bruno-Barbey/1981/POLAND-Book-NN144909.html https://pro.magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/Bruno-Barbey/1981/POL...
- V-2 8y agoIt's better than nothing, but please note that a lot of these are unfortunately inaccurate. Eg. even sizeable cities such as Wrocław are referred to as "towns"... Poznań is supposedly located in the Silesia region... Sopot is referred to alternately by its Polish and German name (Zopott), and the German name is given as the primary one for Frombork (misspelled "Fronbork"), while the Motława river is named "Mottlau" exclusively for some reason, etc.
- akavel 8y agoArrrgh, a photo from Kraków showing the Main Square with the Mariacki church is labeled "The Wawel Castle". It's like showing a photo of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and labeling it "The Eiffel Tower". It's hard to me to even imagine how the labeling process went here... must have been done at least in a big hurry and with blissful ignorance of the subject.
- Markoff 8y agois there difference in polish language between town and city? i would think they distinguish only between towns and villages, cities basically don't exist and town it's their language equivalent
- V-2 8y agoThere aren't two different words, you'd just casually say big city, small city, or "miasteczko", a diminutive from city / miasto. But English still does distinguish between the two, so when you read about a "town" in Poland, what you imagine probably isn't the 4th largest city in the country, home to over 600 thousand people.
- aquarin 8y agoAnother photographer. Poland (and some former socialist courtiers) in the 70's - 80's http://chrisniedenthal.com/en http://chrisniedenthal.com/en
- AstralStorm 8y agoYeah Niedenthal's pictures are not as one sided as these...
- d3ckard 8y agoHighly recommend those. Photos linked in OP are cool and true, but very... selected. They show what was already sort of archaic even for Poles. Niedenthal is way more representative and famous - he was Lech Walesa's presidential photographer later on if I remember correctly.
- bobthechef 8y agoMaybe post them on Hacker News?
- dreta 8y agoshould be required viewing for anybody sympathetic to communism
- wwosik 8y agoWhile I am certainly not a communist, there's little of communisty things in the pictures. It's rather an underdeveloped world and over 30 years ago.
- dreta 8y agoare you being serious? you see pictures of a country that's been under communist rule since the 40s and you see no connection? it's just an underdeveloped country to you?
- viraptor 8y agoThere really aren't many identifiable communist things in the photos. The areas can be underdeveloped for any reason and look similar. This collection on the other hand is very much communism heavy: https://historycollection.co/24-pictures-looking-life-communist-poland/2/ https://historycollection.co/24-pictures-looking-life-commun...
- quakeguy 8y agoThere was never communism established in Poland. Ever.
- def_true_false 8y agoOr anywhere else, right? Perhaps you could just use the term like most people, including those in power in Poland at the time, do.
- V-2 8y agoThe good ol' "no true Scotsman".
- odiroot 8y ago
- wwosik 8y agoJust a note - while photos are true, they should not be taken as the representative or a generalization of how average life looked like. Photos from an Indian reservation or city ghettos will show how the life in the US looks like for certain people, but not as all people in the US live. Obviously, a photographer will concentrate on more exotic topics from his perspective. BTW, is that a feature of an old film, but all those photos look very very grim to me :) Even the ones where people joke and laugh.
- aasasd 8y agoContrast on the photos is cranked up and there are a lot of shadows (I think that's all natural for film, but dunno if also adjusted manually). Plus the photographer picked shots that look still, even frozen―more so when the objects have volume thanks to the contrast. Makes for an eerie and menacing mood.
- koonsolo 8y agoA Belgian photographer once showed that he can create any picture he wants, using the same environment. Well worth the 3 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmbsXussxUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmbsXussxUc. It has English subtitles ;)
- keiferski 8y agoI highly highly recommend seeing the film Cold War, which is set in 1950’s-60’s Europe. The cinematography is near-perfect and the set design really takes you back to communist-era Poland and Paris. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ImvkXgGVWw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ImvkXgGVWw
- aasasd 8y agoIt seems to me that the photos are selected towards the more exotic to a Western photographer or viewer. You could also have shots of urban life barely distinguishable from that of 80s' NY―but that wouldn't be as interesting to viewers, would it? It's hard and possibly erroneous to judge from this temporal distance, but the more I look through cultural artifacts (and what memories I have), the more I feel that the spirit of the time was similar in many aspects across the US, Europe and the USSR (and maybe SE Asia too). Probably because the economy became progressively more global, and because there was a steady trickle of Western culture into even the USSR proper, since the 60s.
- viraptor 8y ago> towards the more exotic to a Western photographer or viewer I'd go with "distinctly Polish" in many cases. The folklore clothing, wood art, ceramic heater/oven, trabant, polonez, priests, village houses, etc. are not just exotic. For me they're very much pictures that identify the set as 100% Poland. There are some exotic things in PL that would be less relatable. I think the photographer did an awesome job with the selection.
- aasasd 8y agoIt might've indeed been photographer's intent, though I have to wonder if it's true in the case of the photos of urban environment―which look quite jarring juxtaposed to traditional elements. It's notable how the USSR never really dumped traditional folk culture: folk tales were featured extensively in children's books, and folklore-based art was prominent. (This might've had something to do with how the government had to raise everyone's support and morale during wartime, afaik even dropping the intense opposition to religion.) And, from what I know, mainland and especially Central European countries tend to hold tighter to their traditional culture compared to both the US and Russia (the latter having wandered around in search of its identity all through the past three centuries).
- oblio 8y ago> For me they're very much pictures that identify the set as 100% Poland. I'm not Polish, but those scenes could very well qualify as being from my country (Romania). There's more similarities between countries in Eastern Europe than we'd like to admit :)
- iagooar 8y agoSorry, this has little to do with what Poland looked like in the 80s. Being born and having lived there for the first few years of my life, these pictures looks as exotic and strange to me as pictures from Yemen or Kazakhstan. I'm not saying they're not real, but these pictures are clearly selected to be as far from what an average Western person considers to be "normal". I guess it's like going to the US, only focusing on the Amish and extrapolating their way of life to the whole country.
- xHopen 8y agoWHile I understand you, you miss the “Through the lens” , Is his personal view, not the real life. That is exactly what photography should be , art.
- Lio 8y agoPeople often complain that a photographer has objectified a particular subject whilst forgetting that cameras objectify everything that they capture regardless of the intention of the photographer. What makes photography interesting is that a photo tells you everything and nothing about a subject. Nothing shown in any photograph is real because you're looking at an impression of reality at a single moment in time.
- ajuc 8y agoIt's not objectifying, it's stereotypising with the most werid stuff you can find. Yeah you could find people riding on horse-drawn carts in Poland in 80s. 1 for every 100 cars or more. Now count cars and horses on these photos :)
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoIn that photo with the wicker-basket love seats on the beach — which I'm guessing is Sopot — we still have those. Also ul Mariacka looks no different. I'm guessing you're from somewhere prosperous? I mean even today, yes Sopot and Warsaw are just masses of Porsches and pretty women, but that isn't the case in some less well-off areas.
- 7723 8y agoThe photo with the ship being pulled uphill. That still exists to date: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RDx-QLW2Tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RDx-QLW2Tk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbl%C4%85g_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbl%C4%85g_Canal
- vondro 8y agoNice photos. They represent personal view of the photographer, as every photo does in the end. One thing can be captured in many ways, showing different points of view or emotions. Enjoy one point of view from one specific place, one photo at a time.
- AstralStorm 8y agoNo picture of any newly built factory... (soon to be torn down or sold) or the concrete buildings that still make the cities ugly.
- gadders 8y agoI sent these pictures to a colleague in our Polish office, and he sent me a few before and after pics: Before: https://i.imgur.com/18lEoGd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/18lEoGd.jpg After: https://cdn.flixbus.de/2017-06/Gdansk-zwiedzanie.jpg https://cdn.flixbus.de/2017-06/Gdansk-zwiedzanie.jpg Before: https://pro.magnumphotos.com/image/PAR96165.html https://pro.magnumphotos.com/image/PAR96165.html After: http://www.psur.pl/ra/cmm_budynek_okm.jpg http://www.psur.pl/ra/cmm_budynek_okm.jpg http://navtur.pl/files/news/281.jpg http://navtur.pl/files/news/281.jpg
- testrun 8y agoFantastic. The first before/after is incredible.
- ido 8y agoFeels like a lot of that stark difference in that first pair was due to particularly present weather in the modern one vs a cloudy/grey day in the old one.
- contingencies 8y agoAlso there are trees now.
- Markoff 8y agoit's mostly just light though in the first, raise gamma/brightness and make colors warmer and it will look pretty much same minus plants
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- thedaemon 8y agoThe boy's backpacks in the photo with them by the fisherman at the lake: they look like $500 backpacks. It's funny how some things have changed in price perspective.
- aasasd 8y agoEh, they were made from artificial leather with questionable feel, and, though the seams could be strong, the work was likely rather imprecise, so it's not quite the same thing. ‘Mass production’ goods from the 80s are now sold very cheaply second-hand, e.g. you can get these backpacks starting with $5, plenty for $15: https://www.avito.ru/rossiya?q=%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86+%D1%81%D1%81%D1%81%D1%80 https://www.avito.ru/rossiya?q=%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%8...
- V-2 8y agoAside from the discussion on to what extent are these pictures actually representative of the overall conditions of the era, it's worth noting that the 1980s in Poland were particularly gloomy even by communist standards. The system was clearly in the final phase of decline, and the crisis had struck hard. The living standard had deteriorated considerably in comparison to the much more cheerful 1970s (when foreign credits helped to boost the consumption). This shows in numerous statistics such as eg. alcohol or nicotine consumption, which peaked in the 1980s.
- Jun8 8y agoI’ve only been to Warsaw once, a couple of years ago, but has a strong mental image of ~80s Polish urban landscape formed from Kieslowski’s movies, esp. the Dekalog (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekalog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekalog) Only the last photo in the set, of kids playing on an abandoned car in a grim apartment complex matched that image. BTW, if you’ve never watched this series you absolutely should, esp, Dekalog 1 should be required watching for technical people, as an antidote to the hubris we sometimes feel in describing nature. Now that I have a son at that age, it strikes even closer!
- jakubwaw 8y agoI grew up in Hrubieszow (one of the eastern-most towns in Poland) in the late 90s and early naughties before emigrating. The photos are very much in line with the scenes I have observed growing up. It's such a contrast to compare my current environment to the one portrayed in the photos (and still lived by some of my extended family members). If these parts stay unchanged, we will soon see places like (in Poland and elsewhere) as an oasis from the super-advanced reality most of the population lives within. Going off other comments here and stories from my parents, the commercials and ads back then were thought to present a more modern, futuristic, "better" life that people worked hard to obtain. Soon, the commercials will present a simpler, older life that we dream of escaping to just for a moment. Interesting thought.
- dariusjs 8y agoIt still looks like that today
- Markoff 8y agoMore like "poor rural Poland" but I guess it's not so catchy as claiming this is regular Poland in 80s where you could buy Coca Cola and watch American/French movies/TV shows. It's pretty sad to see someone pushing their agenda with such clickbait titles.