Apocalypse according to Christopher Miller

Polish photography chronically suffers from a lack of figures, if not legendary, then at least of great stature. One of the few shrouded in an aura of contemporary authority is Krzysztof Miller.

Born in 1962, Miller, like many of his peers, not only participated in the events of martial law, but also actively began to convulse the decline of communist Poland to photograph. In the second half of the 1980s, he became close to the circle of independent photographers associated with the democratic opposition. In 1989 he became involved in working for the then emerging "Gazeta Wyborcza". In an interview conducted by Lukasz Klinke and Piotr Szygalski for the monthly "Playboy" (5/2004), Miller recalls:

I was a gray mouse in the opposition, equipped only with a good camera. In the underground, there was no problem taking a picture, only getting it out. The idea was that the Secret Service wouldn't track you down, that the militia wouldn't catch you. I was it was successful and maybe that's why I became a photographer. I was a co-founder of one of the editorial boards of the then illegal Independent Students' Union at the AWF and it fell to me to document. But they were poor photos.

It began in earnest at "Gazeta Wyborcza," where - not having bad habits - we learned to work from scratch, and so a new formula was established. [At "Gazeta Wyborcza"] jobs were waiting for the five photojournalists who would publish the most photos between May and June 1989. I had good deals with the NZS, Solidarity Youth, Orange Alternative And I knew where to turn up to take pictures. As a result, I took the most of them of all. There were more than twenty people for those five places. Among them were many well-known and good photographers, but to them the existence of "Gazeta" seemed uncertain. With jobs in other editorial offices, they didn't risk it, because they had a lot to lose. They thought that the opposition would lose the elections and "Gazeta" would have to disband. When "Gazeta Wyborcza" was founded, I put everything on one card. I felt then that photography was an awesome occupation, because it was an opportunity to interact with great events, people, and to immortalize it. Thanks to this, history, for example, the Round Table, is seen through one of my photos. Anyway, compositionally and photographically such, but taken from the top, and everyone else was at the bottom. I think I owe my success in photography, paradoxically, to my water jumping coach, who was interested in painting and told me about composition, colors and so on. He painted himself and taught me to look at the world from a completely different perspective. And this has stayed with me.

Krzysztof Miller (born 1962, died September 9, 2016) photojournalist, multiple Polish junior and senior champion in water jumping from springboard and tower. From 1989 he was associated with "Gazeta Wyborcza". War photojournalist. Author of two books: "13 wars and one. The True Story of a War Reporter" and "Photographs That Didn't Change the World."

editors, 2022

The youthful photographs of Poland's political transformation, however, are only a prelude to the mature photography of Miller, whose best-known photographs, taken mainly abroad, date from the 1990s. By that time Miller, already a full-time photojournalist for "Gazeta Wyborcza," was traveling the world, capturing the hottest media events, conflicts in the Balkans, Chechnya, Armenia and Azerbaijan, South Africa, famine in Africa and life in civil war-ridden Afghanistan. In that time, Miller developed his characteristic human-centered, contact and reflective style of a photojournalist emotionally involved in events. Miller's attitude was characteristic of a whole generation of journalists and photojournalists working in the hot 90s, although traces of fascination with the classics of war photojournalism under the sign of the Magnum Agency and - in particular - Robert Capa can also be found in his specific philosophy of photography. When asked by Wojciech Jagielski how close one gets to taking a good photo, Miller characteristically answers that everyone has this limit within themselves. He adds, "I once took a photograph of an American soldier disarming a mine. I couldn't get any closer, because I would have had to stand on that mine. How many such mines did we accidentally avoid together? There were no situations that we didn't take advantage of, acting as a precaution. We always tried to get so close that we couldn't get any closer."

Not surprisingly, Miller's photographs stood out and were memorable. For many people growing up in the 1990s, one of the most important photographic moments was contact with "Gazeta Wyborcza Magazine," in which Krzysztof Miller, among others, regularly published his photographs. Each issue of the weekly color supplement printed in large format - but really large, and not in such frail size and on flimsy paper as now - was an event. The "Magazine" was dense with content, with columns smaller and larger, columns filled with writers of texts and photos. This is probably best illustrated by my own real-life example, since in my case, too, "Magazine" was crucial. Many times later, I returned to the shelved issues of the "Gazeta Wyborcza" supplement, which were difficult to archive due to their size (from my perspective, it was the "Gazeta" that was the supplement to the "Magazine"). I remembered photos of frighteningly emaciated prisoners of camps set up during the fighting in the former Yugoslavia or children from the Congo, published later, half alive from hunger, apocalyptic landscapes of Kabul, Grozny, mystical portraits of the people of Afghanistan, bloody religious festivals in Iraq. On subsequent returns to the remembered photos, it turned out that almost always their author was Krzysztof Miller.

Miller has traveled to war with many journalists, but most often with Wojciech Jagielski. The author of "A Prayer for Rain" told at a meeting held in 2010 at the Baltic Sea Cultural Center that he had to have someone like Miller next to him, because then he knew he was in the center of events. When journalists stayed in hotels to write texts about the war, the photojournalists ruthlessly went to the scene of the action. They were where the story was happening. In a text written later, entitled "The Pif-Paf Brotherhood" and dedicated to Christopher Miller, Jagielski elaborated: "Willing or not, I had to work like them. Up close. When wars break out, they try to get into places where others are trying to escape at all costs. When people, hearing gunfire, take their legs by the waist, they rush to where the shots are coming from to get as close as possible. And being close, right next door, they don't seek shelter, but stick their heads out to see as much as possible and take the best pictures. They carry themselves a bit high, looking down on other journalists. Like frontline soldiers at staffers or those from the representative company."

Jagielski accompanied Miller in being at the center, in photographing the war, often in witnessing the carnage. But also without exaggeration - although Miller was capable of shocking, not in the same way as Kevin Carter or any of the photographers of the black-robed "Pif-Paf Brotherhood ". Miller's photos are dominated by the human dimension of the events. The photographer's and viewer's attention is focused on the innocent victims, the refugees, the fate of "women, old people and children" so often overlooked in the media. This difference can be well seen by comparing the formally similar photographs of Carter and Miller. Carter's famous photo shows a girl lying on the ground, hunched over and starving, being approached by a vulture; this one taken by Miller during the South African riots features the world's top photojournalists in the role of the vulture, taking a close-up shot of the corpse of a black man lying in the street in characteristic professional contortion. Miller had a detachment, Miller didn't eulogize and shied away from empty publicity. He still cares about commissions and publishing photos in the press, but in the community he is known for his ostentatious disregard for all kinds of press photography awards and competitions. In fact, although he may not carry himself so high, he has the makings of a veteran.

It's as if he knew that it's the photos that remain years later, and only the winners and historians remember the awards and prizes. But awards generate interest, and perhaps that's why Miller still remains unknown to the multitude of photography fans. Wojciech Jagielski's widely read books are indeed illustrated with his photos, but they are cruelly cropped and printed poorly, in black and white. There are no exhibitions either, because photojournalism in Poland is not actually shown, except for traveling competition exhibitions. The exhibition from the previously cited Baltic Sea Cultural Center was, to put it mildly, extremely modest. Getting to the photographs that are, after all, at the core of Miller's legend is therefore not easy. I probably wouldn't have done it myself, had it not been for the fact that in 2011 I was offered to take over the editorship of an occasional album that Polish Humanitarian Action wanted to publish. The idea was as simple as it was complicated: we had to choose the best photos of Polish photographers who were active abroad, just like PAH - often together, by the way - going on campaign trips to regions affected by drought, floods, war. Poland is a relatively poor country with a free media system developing after the fall of the People's Republic of Poland, so these journalists and photographers numbered more than a dozen in all. They wrote texts, took photos published and made available by several rather irrelevant global media outlets.

A lot of chance, not much photographic concreteness. It quickly became apparent that material from the border zone between death and life, between war and peace, is most deeply explored by Miller. It's hard to say whether this is due to experience, gaze, the ability not only to grab frames, but also to empathize, to synthesize the image of conflict, to be able to convey the experience of the victims. At the same time, it didn't happen to Miller once or twice to get a compelling frame for a long time, he did it repeatedly, did it all the time, as long as his illness and mental problems allowed him to do so. To the organizers of the PAH jubilee I proposed what I thought was a fair deal: instead of publishing a mediocre book with mediocre photographs of all the photojournalists who went abroad, one should finally publish a monograph of one, but with an above-average output of the artist. The proposal was rejected. The anniversary passes, and the book is gone.

From the archival material provided by PAH, it appeared that after 2000 Miller slowed down. On the one hand, this was due to cutbacks in editorial budgets, which were slowly beginning to feel the crisis and cut back on costly journalist trips to exotic parts of the world, while on the other hand, it was compounded by the author's personal problems. Back in 2004, in the quoted "Playboy" interview, when asked by journalists what changes in him after arriving, for example, from a refugee camp in Zaire, Miller answered with a swagger: "I love life, so I have to have distance. I don't complain, I'm an optimist, and after such Zaire the problems in Poland are no problems for me. By traveling, I gain distance from my life." Also, fear while working seemed to play little role. Although Miller admitted that there are times when he is afraid, but, he added, "it is a controlled fear." It was also not the first or last time he compared photography with the Olympic discipline he trained in his youth: "Jumping into the water is also a constant overcoming of fear. When you stand on a tower and have to do two flips, knowing that you might break your back, you have to overcome fear. The same is true in photography. You can't panic because you still have to get the photos out of the hot area.

Therefore, one cannot be shot. Those who are not afraid die, although this is not the rule. Often the pressure of the media for some amazing material ends tragically." Finally, when asked if there are times war photographers have emotional problems after what they saw, Miller responded as follows: "You don't talk about it. At most you change the plot, of which photography has quite a few." Vigilant journalists of the "for men" magazine probed further, wanting to know whether photographing extreme situations had changed Miller. "Such experiences are difficult to recount," the photographer declared. "It's harrowing, though fortunately my head somehow manages it. However, maybe it is being put off somewhere and will come out in ten or fifteen years." It was put off and came out much sooner than Miller expected. Especially since there was less and less work for a war photojournalist at the Gazette, and those trips that still happened could have dire consequences:

Miller was pulled out of the slump by friends from the Lodz Film School, where he studied photography. With his decision to start undergraduate studies, Miller, who could have successfully taught at the film school, surprised the environment. Even more surprising were the results of the school education of an outstanding photojournalist, who found himself in the role of animator of university life: he co-founded a collective of photographers Slowphoto, as well as groups Artists 24 h i No hankering for mariole.

Miller did not stop there. As part of a school workshop on old techniques, he reworked his work. Using the wet collodion technique, he once again developed iconic photographs, uncovering layers of meaning in the process. The end result elicited admiration from some and consternation from others. The glass plates with the positive image (not negative, as in the original collodion technique) were exhibited, among others, at the Gazeta Wyborcza anniversary exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw in 2009. "There is almost the entire history of photography on one glass plate," Miller wrote on that occasion. "My image goes through three historical technological revolutions in photography: the image from the negative, developed digitally, I reproduce in wet collodion. The emulsion poured onto the surface is never the same, it becomes a unique copy. The choice of frames and photographic technique is not accidental. Wet collodion consists of, among other things, shooting cotton.

It is also an ingredient of explosives, which in war bring death, mutilate bodies, cause suffering - in the photographic process this material gives my heroes immortality. Through the collodion technique I would like to bring them back to life, show how they lived in their difficult times, make them immortal. This is my tribute to them and to the history that played out in front of my camera."

Miller's manifesto was aptly complemented by Basia Sokolowska, who pointed out that collodion "in addition to its use in photography, was also used in medicine to dress wounds. So yet another connection between war wounds and photographic healing of them. This is alchemical thinking, but in relation to wet collodion, this is what seems to explain most." War wounds, in Miller's case, are not so much physical as they are primarily psychological. It is no coincidence that the group's recent projects Slowphoto, called post-photography, are created at the Department of Psychiatry and Combat Stress. There the photographer, along with Polish soldiers returning from missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, received post-stress therapy related to the trauma of war. The collodion images are not Miller's most radical departure from contemporary photojournalism toward artistic creations anyway. In his bachelor's thesis, made under the supervision of Dr. Miroslaw Ledwosiosi and defended at the Film School, titled "The Art of the Photojournalism. +/- Infinity. That is, the 4 Horsemen Apocalypses. That is, 4×4 I, Miller presents a series of graphic compositions, "post-photographic," as he describes them, referring to the term proposed to him by Joanna Kinowska. Abstract motifs and geometric figures (triangles) refer to the experience of twenty-five years of reporter photography, which is now analyzed by the author, the image is distilled, reduced to almost abstract detail, a composition steeped in mysticism on the verge of psychedelia. The atmosphere of this remarkable undergraduate work is best conveyed by extensive quotations from Miller's text, which in the introduction cites the Apocalypse of St. John, specifically the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse symbolizing God (i.e., Religion, Hope), War, Famine and Death. "The problems of Hope, War, Famine and Death are also the subjects of testimonies I have given with my press, reportage or documentary photography," Miller writes and adds:

The bachelor's thesis is a testimony of measuring with this "galimatias in the head" of a professional, but also a lot of interesting opinions, judgments, definitions, which allow to reconstruct the vision of the profession and the reasoning, to bring closer the sensitivity and understand the condition of the modern photojournalist. In Christian culture the text is read from left to right, in Muslim culture From right to left, in Far Eastern culture From top to bottom, and in culture string writing, depending in which direction the wind blows and how we will put knots through the wind unraveled. Photography, on the other hand is the universal language of the world. It can be read in all directions, regardless of culture depreciating our lives. In a text written with a sincerity not usually found in tired student dissertations, there are also numerous references to the course of study, the idea of teaching, reflections on photography, and the way lecturers appeal to students. Prof. Prażmowski, on one Of the lectures, he said: "Do revolution In photography. Who if not YOU, the young students, can make a Revolution." Post-photography is so my personal revolution, the causes and effect of which I expound below. Post-photography, post-photography, this, Which comes as soon as the execution dozens and hundreds of materials reporters, or reflections on the world and photos, are the strongest point here, a nail stuck in the brain of the author-witness to the events.

When the dramas I have seen come back to my mind, it is not in the form of a singular or additive effect, but compounded. Being a passive observer of one, two, four, sixteen or more human tragedies, they squared and intensified in me with successive browsing of contact sheets, prints, scans. Each selection, whether for publication, exhibition, presentation, brought back memories of events unfolding before the glass of my lens. And it was these most traumatic professional experiences that at some point in my life overlapped with the bad experiences of my personal life. They exploded in my head and my body stopped functioning efficiently [...]. It used to be that taking pictures was magic. The negative had to be exposed precisely. Then it went through a series of baths, was dried and went into a darkroom, illuminated only by red light, under an enlarger. Photo selection, framing, exposure of the paper, which also went into the bath, took place. In the developer, the image would appear, emerge from the white, gain strength, but before bringing it to the light of day, it still had to be fixed. Yes, photography was magic [...]. When I went with Wojtek Jagielski to Africa or Afghanistan as a photojournalist, we fell into a communication black hole for two or three weeks. The editors didn't have any contact with us, didn't know what material we would bring back, waited to hear from us. A cellular connection was not even dreamed of. On these trips I did little news photography, more photojournalism - big photographic stories.

It was at this class that I first painted with candle crayons an orange rectangle with two
emerald dots. I defended the project theoretically in front of a therapist and fellow patients. Then my afterimages from traumatic professional stories and those that reached and stayed in my head due to the
mass media, began to become graphical, flattened to the bare minimum of colors and geometric figures. Evolve towards constructivism and minimalism. Thus fed by my imagination, they were not only more bearable for my head and mood, but I regained my creative vigor and creative fertility anew.

Working on oneself and on one's own photographs, the action of which takes place in the photographer's head, has much of the flavor of therapy, of a daze, a mystical vision or a psychotropic high. There is not space here to cite each of Miller's descriptions of mystical, post-photographic triangles, but it is worth giving at least one example. PThe basis of the sequence "Surrealism" are [photos] raw, on-the-spot evoked images, situations that often come back to me in my sleep. Dramatic stories adorned with surreal motives. They come back to me with an intensified strength. One of the more common motives are the heroes of my photos floating in space on wings butterflies. One of my witches explained to me that my characters live one day at the time I photograph them and at the time of publication. They live a short life, just like butterflies. Only in my mind are they immortal. Surreal triangles saturated with significant colors populate excerpts from Miller's photographs, carefully scrubbed and supplemented with butterfly Wings. His bachelor's thesis Miller concludes as follows:

Despite Miller's growing college interest in creative photography and old techniques as a tool for reevaluating the exhausting language of press photography, the author himself declares: "Reportage is my whole life, from time to time I may indulge in creative photography, but I am a photojournalist, I can't imagine life without daily press photography." Despite group layoffs at Gazeta Wyborcza, the liquidation of the Photo Department, and conflict between the newspaper's publisher and photographers, Miller decided to accept Agora's terms, which were rejected by most of his colleagues. Miller's decision was so controversial that today some of his longtime friends and colleagues don't even shake his hand. Miller doesn't care, preferring to take pictures and publish in Gazeta rather than sign class action lawsuits against his employer. In 2011 he began work on an autobiography. At the beginning of 2012, he was offered to make a documentary film about his history and photography. It looks like we will soon find out who Krzysztof Miller actually is.

Books by Christopher Miller

editors, 2022