Taking self-portraits is like crossing a door, and arriving at a safe, new place1 Large-format photographs of young women* hang on a sea-colored stone wall. The wrinkles on the stones become fleshy, and contrasting with the dark color of the surroundings, the naked bodies seem like shell-less mollusks cast ashore. Hardness and softness, strength and delicacy, independence....
Communist Poland is associated with gray: gray people in a gray landscape. Gray concrete facades, advertising signs in dull colors, no lights on the streets, monochromatic clothing made of poor-quality materials, ugly paper packaging. This atmosphere is documented - already in the new reality - in Nicholas Winter's (b. 1973) sepia Polaroids from the series "New Wilanów" (2009). Poland after 1989...