EN
The book was based on the archive of 1950s–1980s photographs documenting the foundation of Tychy taken by Zygmunt Kubski – the author’s grandfather – currently in the collection of the Tychy City Museum. By means of cropping and juxtaposing fragments of photographs, the author observes the daily life and its protagonists. She follows random characters in the photos, searches for familiar faces, pays attention to gestures, movement. She observes them in small excerpts of photographs, as the entire frames have been dedicated to urban space. Freely, she conducts a game between the photographer’s perspective and her own idea of this collection. The use of a non-standard printing method – risography – allowed her to achieve effects that refer to the time when the photographs were taken. This makes every copy unique – there are small printing defects, such as pollen or matrix shifts – and the photographic material is austere, newspaper-like in character. The haptic properties of the book constitute an important element of the project. The photographs are accompanied by a text by Justyna Balisz-Schmelz entitled “In the Shadow of Socialistic Utopia” and the author’s commentary.