Polish Summer / work in progress

Brzezinka (ger. Birkenau), Lesser Poland / a Village near Auschwitz, where from 1941 to 1945 the biggest extermination camp of the Third Reich was located.
Since the fall of 2015, when Jarosław Kaczyńskis PiS party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, eng: Law and Justice) took power in Poland, democracy has been called into question. The state media will become the mouthpiece of the government, the independence of the courts is suspended. According to the opinion polls, it is done with the consent of the majority of society. In the 1980s, the country played an exemplary role in the democratisation of Eastern Europe. It was the Solidarity movement, which at that time was fighting for the values of freedom and helped the fall of the Eastern bloc. Just a few years ago, these events seemed to form a stable basis for democracy in Poland.
Polish Summer is intended to be a photographic analysis of the current socio-political processes and at the same time an attempt to examine the reasons for the gradual break with democracy in Poland. The photo trip across the country will take place on two levels. On the one hand, we have to study everyday spaces that tend to go unnoticed, but which are daily for millions the environment. On the other hand, political and historical places of remembrance are photographed, which are of importance for the present mental structure of society. Each picture of these photographs is accompanied by an explanatory text.

Technical realisation: Large format 4x5-inch and color film, Presentation: exhibition and photo book.
Lesznowola by Warsaw, Mazovia.
Gliwice, Upper Silesia / the original tower of the radio station (in the background), where the Nazis carried out a provocation on 31.08.1938, which served as a reason for the attack on Poland the day after.
Cracow, Lesser Poland / The Lord's Ark Church in the Cracows Nowa Huta district. The Catholic community wanted to build a church here as early as 1960. However, the communist regime did not allow it at first. There were violent clashes, which became known as "defense of the cross". First after1969 that was possible to start building the church. The church was consecrated in 1977.
Poronin, Tatra Mountains, Lesser Poland / One of the many billboards of the anti-abortion campaign in Poland. The way of presentation solves violent protests in the population.
Łódź, Łódź / "Polnische Hochzeit" ("polish wedding") - a german drink, recipe: you take: a good shot of bisongrass vodka, for example Grasovka, fill the glass with naturally cloudy apple juice, add some cinnamon and a leaf of mint - ready!
Dębica, Lesser Poland / One of the meanwhile more than one hundred monuments to Lech Kaczyński, the former Polish president, who died in 2010 in Smolensk in Russia in a plane crash.
Białowieża, Podlasie / The Białowieża Forest is one of the last remaining virgin forest areas in Europe and is partly a UNESCO nature reserve. Against the protests of the ecologists and sanctions of the EU, polish forestry administration force a mass deforestation here since 2016. The Polish government claims that the forest is threatened by a pest.
Bolesławiec, Lower Silesia.
Warsaw, Mazovia / a Lewandowski family.
Katowice, Upper Silesia / Due to the great wave of strikes of the Solidarity Movement, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party (PZPR), has established the martial law in Poland. Three days later, on 16 December 1981, there were heavy clashes in the KWK Wujek mine between the strikers and the special forces of the ZOMO regime militia. In the course of the incidents 9 miners were killed, another 23 were injured. Officially, 41 members of militia were also injured.