Paluch -Polish hip hop at it's best.

Marian "Welfer" Milewski RIP

"We have lost our homeland, we must defend everything... Family, land, homeland, everything. This is you know, impossible to describe." Marian Milewski, known as 'Welfer', was a member of the Polish Underground State during World War II and a participant in the Polish Uprising. He lived in Cardiff for most of his life.I took pictures of him in 2008. This one is from his house.

Today the news reached me about his passing at age 95. RIP.

Spoczywaj w pokoju, Panie Marianie.

Vikings

Something I started a while ago, something I would like to explore further.

Contact Sheets - 2 - Adventure

Every now and then I will post a fragment of an oldish negative... This one is from 2005. Besides the fact that most of these images are very personal, they are also vernacular illustrations of an early stage immigration to Wales. I am not sure of their quality. They illustrate first.

13 years since I arrived to Wales with my mate Maras. Whoa, I was just a kid! I was living an adventure.

Contact Sheets - 1 - Kamila

Every now and then I will post a fragment of an oldish negative... This one is from 2008 (I think)... Besides the fact that most of these images are very personal, they are also vernacular illustrations of an early stage immigration to Wales. I am not sure of their quality. They illustrate first.

The girl in the middle (and left) photograph is my cousin Kamila. I was surprised by this image today, as I don't really remember taking it. It seems we had a fun evening (?)...

Kamila is no longer with us (she lost her battle with breast cancer earlier this year), and this is why this image hits me so much. She is so young and beautiful here. In first instance, I almost failed to recognise her... It's mad to be honest. We all came to the UK for our personal reasons, some for adventure, some to better a quality of life... But death (and its aftermath for the close ones) was never in our minds. We were way to young to think, and care about stuff like this...

Life is full of surprises... I love you my dear cousin, rest in peace...

Kissing Comrades

While working on my PhD I stumbled across images of Grażyna Rutkowska, a Polish press photographer who worked extensively during the PRL period.

Her images can be found at http://www.nac.gov.pl as this institutions holds Rutkowska's personal archive. In fact, NAC published a book about her, which can be downloaded from here (yes, it's in English)!

While going through thousands and thousands of her images, I realised she had a tendency to photograph men (and much less woman) kissing each other during different political, cultural or religious events. I found them interesting and while I kept them on my computer for a while, hoping to write a more ambitious article/blog post about them, I just don't have time to do so... 

Here they are therefore, there is no point to keep them away anymore. I decided to post them here without any comments, and without translation of Rutkowska's captions and for that I apologise (if you are very curious, you can always follow this link to her archive).

But thinking of it... Who needs a caption? In the end photography is the truth and a mirror of reality!

Ps. All images were taken in Poland (1968 - 1976).

I was walking to the library today...

... and had ideas about new photographic project. I even have a title for it. Does it mean, that my break from shooting is nearly over? 

Maybe? 

I am officially a published comic book artist ;)

But it seems like it was only a one-off adventure ;)

Zeszyty Komiksowe #23:

Hip Hopowy zin PLAYA - Tylko dla prawdziwych graczy!!!!

Back in the early 2000's we were creating a hip hop zine called PLAYA. It went quite viral and the last three issues we did, took a form of a magazine and had a CD with music attached to is as a bonus. Great times, but as for me, I was still very confused then... I could probably blame all the weed I've smoked ;)

Sometimes I draw comics.

2016.