Photography exhibit “Time Frozen”

Opening 16 November at 15:00 at the Central Agricultural Library in Warsaw and running until 31 December 2006, the photography exhibit “Time Frozen” aims to clarify the most absurd myth to exist about Nowa Huta (the Soviet-planned utopian town and enormous steel mill turned grey reminder of communist times outside of Krakow): that it was founded on sandy, barren lands. The exhibit features photography from the former villages on which the Socialist city and steel mine were built. The authorities justified taking the lands by propagating the myth that the people who presently lived there were poor country people, living in peasant huts, which should be torn down to build new neighborhoods. Such was the propaganda of the Polish Peoples’ Republic, but thanks to the long-term indoctrination of society its echoes still reverberate today. Justice or compensation never reached those forced to move, even after the end of communism.

The collection of photography and documents illustrates the disconcerting losses of a generation, first tragically on the fronts of the First World War and the resulting destruction of houses in the area by enemy armies, then the German occupation and daily arrests, deportations, and executions. And finally, in the first years after the war, when ordinary people began to believe that a time of calm had finally arrived, a subsequent turmoil shook them from their homes, this time in the name of a Socialist experiment. The exhibit is a documentation of those times of change. It cannot be forgotten how many paid an extremely high price for such an trial, many having to start their lives completely from scratch, losing rich regional and familial traditions in the process. Before Nowa Huta was built, the area’s economy and culture was in full bloom, full of imaginative individuals. Perhaps thanks to this exhibit, they and their families might be redeemed, because after all, they were here first.