Transcriber: Ewa Spohn Reviewer: Ilze Garda
(Polish) Good morning.
In September 2004,
eight years ago almost to the day,
I arrived in Warsaw on assignment from my agency, Magnum Photos.
My brief, if you could call it that,
was to spend a month in Poland and photograph what I liked.
I was one of a group of 10 photographers,
each allotted one of the 10 new countries to join the European Union that same year.
So I booked myself into a self-catering apartment,
high in a tower block,
and I gazed out over the city.
It looked very big, and I felt very lost.
I had no idea what I was going to do.
So I decided to head east, to Białystock, hoping that a smaller city
and an even more foreign landscape would inspire me in some way.
But as I walked around those peculiarly Soviet-looking streets,
with my big camera, big tripod over my shoulder,
I convinced myself I wasn't wanted there.
Everywhere I looked, people seemed to be eyeing me with suspicion.
Now in retrospect, of course, I imagined this,
because if there was anything wrong at all,
it was my body language,
which was full of self-doubt and lack of any idea of what I was doing there.
So back in Warsaw, I rang the Magnum office in Paris.
I told them I needed someone to help me.
Someone who could introduce me to this strange land,
and someone I could bounce some ideas off.
So later that afternoon,
the Polish photographer Konrad Pustoła knocked at my door.
We talked about his work, we talked about my work,
and then we went to a bar,
and we watched England beat Poland in the European Championship.
(Laughter)
Konrad was very gracious in defeat, and so our friendship was sealed.
We got into his car, and off we went.
So I began to enjoy myself then,
and so deeply did I fall for this country
that I decided to extend my project far beyond the original commission.
I felt that I had started something interesting and I should really continue.
So I kept coming back,
over and over again, for the next 5 years.
In bookshops, I flicked through albums of pretty Polish castles and lakes,
all shot in glorious sunshine and under deep blue skies.
Locations of accepted beauty that tourists should see.
But this wasn't the kind of Poland I was seeing through Konrad's car window,
that was a different kind of beauty.
A beauty of the overlooked, the neglected, the forgotten, and the still.
Odd little corners,
waiting for the European Union to somehow make a difference.
But for me, they were places to breathe to look, and to enjoy.
And to laugh a little.
I also met several Polish photographers,
many were making really interesting work,
but what I learnt most from these encounters,
I guess I already knew.
When photographers work in their own country,
it's almost impossible to stand back
and see anything even remotely objectively.
Of course, photography can never be objective,
and my work certainly never is,
but when we - and by we I mean photographers collectively -
make pictures at home in our own land,
we tend to get bogged down with details.
We think we understand why things are as they are,
and we try to make an intelligent response.
We often start to tell stories.
Before he turned to photography,
Konrad, who incidentally became known as my Polish wife,
(Laughter)
had trained as an economist,
and when we arrived somewhere,
he would tell me what he knew about that place.
But knowing facts about a place when you come from somewhere else,
doesn't necessarily make you see it any differently.
Nevertheless, I did start to learn, of course,
but I tried to retain a respectable distance from my subject.
I didn't want to get too close
because I knew that distance was a bonus to me,
because Poland was and still is an exotic country to me.
I was attracted to strange, out of the way places:
the edges of cities, or scrubby little towns
that we would pass through without me even knowing their names.
But they were always beautiful in their own peculiar way,
and the wonderfully flat, gray central European light
seemed to make everything glow,
and intensified the most subtle of colours.
In the end,
perhaps because I am a foreigner here, there is no story except my own.
The work became about my journey, and of the people I met along the way,
and some of the things I saw.
It also became about the sheer joy of photography,
which is a license to look and be nosy,
and I hope that some day the work will become
an important historical document of Poland in these fascinating times.
But the work refers to history's past as well,
for to ignore the extraordinary and often tragic history of this country,
would be to do it a disservice
because there are things you cannot ignore.
Overwhelmed by the weight of visits to Lublin, Treblinka, Birkenau,
the only way I could talk about WW2 was to photograph somewhere else.
An abandoned factory in Gdańsk.
The piles of tubes, reminiscent of photographs
we've already seen, we're already familiar with.
The juxtaposition of a courtyard in Kazimierz, in Kraków.
The former Jewish Quarter, of course,
with the window of a commercial photographer in Warsaw.
Metaphors that reference something we will never understand,
no matter where we are from.
There is a former mining town in the north east of England
that is now said, jokingly, to exist only on the three T's:
tanning, tattoos, and taxis.
Last year, I was commissioned by a small but progressive arts organization
called Multistory
to make some urban landscapes in the Black Country,
an area to the west of Birmingham,
in the post-industrial heartland of the British Midlands.
It covers some 350 square kilometers,
which means it's bigger than Cyprus or Estonia,
and it's home to about 1.1 million people.
It's a diverse community,
with some 15% coming from black, minority or ethnic origin.
So this time, I find myself working in Britain,
in a place I should know and understand,
but how different the Black Country seemed from Brighton
on Britain's relatively affluent south coast where I live.
You have to look hard
to find much evidence of the recession in Brighton,
but in the Black Country, it was immediately obvious.
I began to notice the array of beauty parlours everywhere,
all apparently doing good business.
And there seemed to be
more than the average number of 'gentlemen's clubs' here too,
also doing well.
I did some research, and I found out that both industries, beauty and sex,
often thrive in times of adversity.
In Britain, during the war,
many women would rouge their faces and wear bright lipstick,
an indulgence that was fondly referred to as 'wearing the red badge of courage'.
In the United States,
the government declared the production of lipstick a wartime essential,
because of its positive effect on morale.
These days there is even a term called the 'lipstick indicator',
and some economists will point to the rising lipstick sales
as a reliable sign of a sagging economy.
I suppose it's place is already economically-challenged
that are hit hardest in times of recession.
I heard that in Dudley,
which one of the largest towns in the Black Country,
even McDonald's is out and gone elsewhere.
Yet, among the boarded up shops,
there remains a spirit and a pride among the people,
and again, a quiet, simmering beauty.
It might not have been a place I knew,
but unfamiliarity is relative.
And in the end,
perhaps because I was not a foreigner there,
I did get lost in details, and I did start to tell a story.
Because when times are tough and you don't have much money,
just getting a spray tan, or your eyebrows threaded,
or your nails polished and painted,
can make you feel better about the world and yourself
if only for a short time.
Nail polish has now replaced lipstick as the most recession-proof cosmetic.
One report I read claims
that sales have risen by 54% in the past year in Britain.
Nail bars are one of the fastest growing businesses on the British high street,
making up 16% of new outlets opening in the last three years.
Historically, the cosmetics industry hasn't always had it so good.
In 1770, the British Parliament passed a bill making lipstick illegal,
and ruling that women found guilty
of 'seducing men into matrimony by a cosmetic means',
(Laughter)
could be tried for witchcraft.
(Laughter)
There is a nice local link here.
Helena Rubinstein who was born in Krakow,
was one of the handful of individuals responsible for transforming beauty salons
from the moral equivalent of a brothel,
to the fashionable and stylish establishments we know today.
'Gentlemen's clubs' are not thriving nationally in quite the same way,
but they are certainly recession-proof,
and in parts of the Black Country, they remain extremely popular,
offering men a sexualised encounter
without any pressure of any physical performance.
They're cheap, sometimes free to enter,
and bar prices are similar to those in a pub.
While, of course, I realise
that not all men who go to these places are suffering hardship,
perhaps a similar function is performed
because one purpose of these clubs
is to make men feel attractive, confident, and powerful.
This woman moved to the Black Country from Romania, in search of a better life.
She was happy to be filmed, but she was embarassed by her new job,
and wondered what other parents in the school playground would think.
"It's only temporary," she said; just while she got herself on her feet.
This is another Romanian woman,
she told me she used to work for an insurance company,
and yes, these activities still objectify women,
but both lap dancing and pole dancing have become newly respectabilized in Britain,
promoted as mainstream corporate entertainment,
or a fitness activity.
When I exhibited the work,
we made a soundscape of the names
of the beauty products, lipsticks, eyeshadows,
read by an actress with a strong local accent.
Visitors were able to savour the words, and their evocative and descriptive power.
And their utter ridiculousness.
(Video) Narrator: Electric Eel.
Daring Mauve.
Blue Paradise.
Love Blush.
Optimist Orange.
Raspberry.
Neon Pink.
Citron Kiss.
Ruby Woo.
Gold Fingers.
Pink Punch.
Aqua Fresh.
Pink Sugar.
Forever Fuschia.
Citrus Slice.
Lexington Yellow.
Delicious Pink.
Mark Power: (Polish) Thank you.
(Applause)