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”We are trying to replace the severed limb of folk culture with a prosthesis of the memory of nobility”.
Michał Rauszer “Bękarty pańszczyzny” [Bastards of Serfdom]

In their festive folk costume — jakla, apron, depending on their places of birth, they are posing for photographs. Behind the women, landscapes painted onto photographic backdrops, furnishing collective representations of social advancement, of finding oneself in a different, better space — in a palace, an aristocratic salon, a French garden. The photography is not intended to put their life on display, quite the opposite. Blue air without a trace of pollution, vivid colours, the atmosphere of an idyll, though in close up — the painting appears rather unsophisticated. There is a certain dissonance here. The identity is declared through the outfit, the place is conventional: anywhere but here.

Archival photograph courtesy of the collection of the Silesian Museum in Katowice.