Report from the Besieged City
“I turn to history not for lessons, but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience”. Zbiginew Herbert .
“Report from the Besieged City” is inspired by the work of the polish poet, humanist and philosopher Zbiginew Herbert, which explores the mechanisms of power and ideology. His “distinctive human, but tragicomic sense of ‘‘historical irony” and his fascination with place and history sedused me as a photographer to investigate the urban landscape and to reflect on the historical moment the polish society lives in. Focusing on the constructions and architectural structures in the city center of Warsaw, as well as intimate portraits, advertisments and symbolic imagery of the period of a political (and personal) transition, my project documents socio-economic change and interrogates the history by reflecting on the past, but at the same time seeking answers about the trajectory we are moving in. By pointing my camera on the urban structures and thropes I’m interested to explore how a city, which has withstanded fascism, communism and capitalism is changing through time and how those changes are represented by the city landscape and the urban environment, but also how do they influence and reflect on the “eternal and ever-changing man” (Herbert), resisting the whims of history.
