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).

No Show vs NATO.

In the next few days I will be uploading some more pictures from the events evoked by the NATO summit which took place in South Wales at the beginning of September.

One of the biggest disappointments of it all was the small crowd actively protesting against the summit... I thought people will be outraged, out on street, screaming their hearts out. Of course there were, but it seems to me, the majority of citizens here are rather comfortable with the way things are. Funny, at times it felt like there were more photographers then protesters themselves. Surrounded by lenses I thought, there was no point to shoot like everybody else. Classic Ducumentary(esque). I had nothing to loose, as I wasn't working for anyone or on a project. I decided to push my picture making. Do something I haven't done yet.

During the march in Newport, I have had some problems with one of the lady photographers. I have no clue who she was, but she looked like she was working for some agency or a newspaper. She was constantly trying to move me away from places I was photographing from. I guess, in her opinion, I was to close for her to not to include me in her pictures. I never knew there was some type of fucking etiquette when shooting events like this. What I know is - I don't really like it. If you are shooting an event, try to shoot it the way it really looked. There was a massive number of photographers. Plenty of Documentary Photography students from Caerleon must have had something to do with it... Just get them in. Don't alternate the news and convince people you were the only one witnessing what happened...  

Anyways. Next summit is in Warsaw, Poland. I might go, as it will be interesting for sure.