On the one hand, they built a multicinema
On the other hand, they are enlarging the cemetery
- Marcin Świetlicki
Sometimes, when looking at photographs, words come to mind, words of favorite poems or songs, which, although they are often a snippet from the context, bring us under the door of imagination, of certain stories. They provoke discovery and invite us to go further; and so I began to discover Wojciech Karlinski's photographs and spaces, where trees humbly in front of a block of flats hold up laundry, where a cemetery has low prices, where....
For many years I lived in similar blocks of flats as in Karlinski's photos. I spent my childhood in the only four-story block of flats left by the Soviet army on Koszarowa Street. A lonely block among small red tenements. However, not far away it had similar neighbors from Kilinskiego Street, or on the other side from Kosciuszko Street. I grew up on these blocks and remember very well the metal playgrounds and the adapted basements of the blocks for stores or game rooms. In adulthood, I came to live in an old block of flats that used to be a worker's block for the workers of Tonsil (once the largest factory in Września). The estate of blocks was punctuated by playgrounds and Socialist Supers.
Throughout the 1990s, and even much later, there was no question of communist architecture becoming more colorful, beautiful and in line with the rest of the city. Small estates quite recently renovated their "gray monsters", which were not only living spaces for people, but also relics of a bygone world. For photographers and documentary filmmakers, with despite years of taming, these buildings have always been grateful objects not only for photos, but above all for telling multi-layered stories. Also, in the settlements between blocks of flats even in small cities, in the provinces, the abstraction and surrealism of everyday life was also sometimes as intense as in large agglomerations.
The gray slabs like the protective walls of a community, and behind them squares with benches, where locals on hot evenings sat in the light of the windows surrounding their concrete guards. In Wojciech Karlinski's photographs we see what many of us might have seen while living in a block of flats. In small towns, apartment blocks are increasingly being "powdered" and coexisting arrangements such as squares, benches and "wild pitches" are disappearing. Increasingly, old blocks of flats, through their makeup, are imitating modernity and trying to conform to the illusory shelf of luxury. In larger cities this is more difficult, so we can still , "admire" clusters of "gray colossi" and all the often very absurd things that coexist with them in symbiosis.
Concrete playgrounds under the block or metal swings are already rare, yet the author of the series The big dream of small towns He still finds them and, despite taming these elements over the years, is sensitive to them. Through his form and composition he shows us this "mismatched world" that has survived. The plasticity of the image, which the cinematographer uses, is an accurate complement to the composition, which builds up the whole story and introduces some drama in the perception of the resulting photographs. This definitely suits the world presented to us, which these days is on the one hand an unwanted element of history, and on the other a perpetual living space, a living organism, which, however, constantly adapts and persists. These are important contemporary stories on the gray pages of a bygone deity, a concrete deity that had great ambitions to work for society. Today, this deity, are not very beautiful sarcophagi, residential coffins with windows, and in them endless stories. Looking at Karlinski's photographs, this is precisely the impression one gets, as if each frame, each block, is a concrete newspaper from which we can read.
The author writes about his project as follows:
Blocks - groups of apartments connected by a common spatial structure, in larger agglomerations functioning as block housing. Their construction, encouraged in communist-ruled Poland, was a sign of progress, especially since before the war small towns were usually a cluster of crumbling cottages. In communist Poland, blocks of flats became synonymous with big-city success, while in small towns they appeared as a sign of striving for a better world, they were supposed to be a witness to development and a way of showing "we too are great," "modernity is reaching us too."
Their construction, brought citizens closer to the "big world" of big-plate apartments and constituted a kind of "status quo" in the fabric of the township. Life led in an apartment, no longer in a free-standing house, showed a modern way of thinking and progress, placing residents, as it were, higher than the earlier generation. Over time, however, the changing political situation changed the meaning of the blocks of flats that were built at the time, and they became a relic of how things were once thought, something shameful that would degrade and disappear from the map of towns. However, this has not happened, people continue to live there, successive generations adapt the space anew. Sometimes patching up the surroundings with strenuous efforts, using the means at their disposal, sometimes thanks to money from the municipality. Regardless of how they modernize the living space and the surrounding infrastructure, there you can see people's approach to "home" as a place to live.
Therefore, the photographic project "The Big Dream of Small Towns" is a story about a place that is so tamed by us that it seems ordinary and safe. A space that goes unnoticed because it is as obvious as our life in it. However, let's try to look at the blocks again. And so the first photographs, show them from a distance. Their solid, geometric form emerges slowly in the frame. We move closer to it starting to see the details. Anonymous squares of windows, the rhythm of the architect's intention, fragments of roads or greenery slowly revealing to us the individual approach of each resident. Curtains in the windows, flower pots, sometimes the shadow of figures hidden behind the glass. It then reaches us that on the other side are people for whom the space we coolly look at from the other side of the lens is something identical to their lifestyle or tastes.
Similarly, stairwells, their entrances, letters sticking out of mailboxes, or even inscriptions spontaneously spray-painted become information about the residents. Moving on from the block structure itself, we can see the entire infrastructure of the neighborhood or complex of several buildings. We see the booths where it was decided to create a grocery store, a pub, a hairdressing salon, a nursing home, cooperatives, in a word, everything a person might need to make his life comfortable. Sandboxes, basketball hoops, outdoor gyms, benches for seniors, places where one can relax among the trees draw attention to the multi-generational nature of the residents. Finally, we see posters advertising chain stores, positioned as in big cities on the smooth walls of blocks of flats, shouting "you can afford it too." Then, however, comes the mundane of life.
Cemeteries squeezed between blocks of flats next to supermarkets, being a kind of "memento mori", do not let us forget the fragility of residents. However, life goes on, the nets put in place while insulating blocks of apartments, the construction of new apartments and new decorativeness are changing the face of small settlements. The need to give a touch of individuality appears on the blocks, on the smooth spaces of windowless walls, where we see geometric patterns (a reference to Piet Mondrian's paintings comes as a surprise) or references to the region. This industrial decorativeness so identical to the places shows the strong connection of the residents with the block of apartments, but also pride in their place of residence. Photographs featuring just these pieces of architecture become lyrical, sometimes nostalgic. They are like an August afternoon, creating a warm mood and a sense of security. They seem to say: we are fine here!
