I’ve mentioned the city many times on this blog, partly because I know it well, partly because it’s eventually, although very slowly, shedding its “dirty, industrial and boring” image.

Heavy industry has always been a crucial part of this city’s – and the region’s – history, but over the past 20 years Katowice and many neighbouring cities have had to reinvent themselves. The coal mines and steel factories might be gone, but they have been replaced by General Motors, Fiat and hundreds of others which helped the area reinvent itself.

Katowice itself is undergoing probably one of the most dramatic changes in its recent history. The lovely, partly neglected and partly confused city centre is being re-developed. Mariacka St, once a very dodgy, but architecurally lovely street, has been pedestrianised and the city’s biggest eyesore, the main railway station, is eventually (although not without controversy) going to be rebuilt and its sorrounding area transformed into a very modern transport and shopping hub.

All that is captured in the film. From Nikiszowiec, the old working class district of Katowice, where window frames and sills are still painted bright red, to Rynek, the curiously underused central square. From the recently modernised Rondo gyratory (with the famous flying saucer-shaped Spodek concert hall in the background), to the about-to-be-completely-rebuilt bus and train station in the heart of the city.

Those who know Katowice, will find many familiar sights here, those who don’t should probably give it a chance. After all, it’s been shortlisted as one of Poland’s candidates to become the European City of Culture in 2016.

Katowice. Rok w fotografii Gazety Wyborczej
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If you happen to be in Katowice over the next few weeks, make sure to visit the exhibition, which is open from 9.12.2010 to 14.01.2011 in the Cultural Centre in Katowice.

My occasional series Pole poll is back with a bang. Well, with a flash – as today’s ‘subject’ is a Pole, but also a very fine photographer. He’s also very private, so I’ve abandoned the usual format of five questions and five answers to concentrate more on his superb project called ‘From The Upper Deck‘.

Przemek Wajerowicz came to London some four years ago and turned his passion for street photography into a very London hobby – he started going around the city on double-decker buses, taking pictures of people and situations from a slightly different perspective.

He told me that the view from the upper deck of a double-decker bus had always fascinated him and he started taking pictures from the moment he arrived in London. However he lost the initial batch of photographs after his hard drive crashed.

But he picked himself up and carried on. Soon the hobby became a project. And an ambitious one too – Przemek wants to travel every single bus line in London – from the very first to the very last stop.

In 2008 he started publishing his daily bus pictures on his blog and once he’s tackled everything Transport for London has to offer, he wants to publish a book with the best pictures taken from the upper deck. And I’m looking forward to getting a copy. As a photographer myself I think this is a great project and Przemek executes it with passion.

I’m planning to write a bit on his project soon elsewhere, for now here’s more From The Upper Deck.

You can also follow Przemek on Twitter.

All images © Przemek Wajerowicz used with author’s permission

The first one is called ‘A postcard from Poland’ and is a massive collection of photographs depicting what Poles were doing today at midday, twenty day after the collapse of Communism. Gazeta wants to create a gigantic archive which it wants to share online, but also with museums and archives across Poland.

As a photographer I love this idea. Images can be much more powerful than words and no doubt today will bring a few fantastic, emotional, funny or simply stunning shots. I’m looking forward to browsing the archive – and I guess if you’ve never been in Poland, the ‘postcard’ might be a good place to start exploring the country and its people.

The other project launched by Gazeta.pl is Gazetopedia.pl – which is a cross between and online archive spanning twenty years and a social networking or user-generated site (by the way, the word ‘gazeta’ itself means ‘newspaper’; Gazeta Wyborcza, nowadays often perceived as a left-leaning, liberal paper, was the first independent daily paper in Poland launched roughly a month before the June elections). Users can browse every single front page of Gazeta Wyborcza (the precursor of Gazeta.pl), have a look at a timeline of Polish and world events from the past two decades and modify the pages to give them a unique look and feel.

Browsing though the front pages I came across one article from 20th June 1989, which describes how Poland was left without sugar and flour as factories didn’t manage (allegedly) to produce enough of them to satisfy the demand… Those were the times.

The Londoneer is well-travelled and recently published a couple of posts after his visit to Lodz, an old industrial city in the heart of Poland, not far from Warszawa. So I got in touch with Pete, the blog’s author to ask if I could republish some of his pics and quote his Polish posts here.

I like the way he writes about Poland – trying to explain why things are the way the are, how the history shaped the country, its cities and people, paying an equal amount of attention to the ugly side of Lodz:

We were a little surprised to discover exactly how ugly Lodz is, for the most part. It has no beautiful main square like most big Polish cities, not even a reconstructed one – the one here is the ugliest town square I’ve ever seen – a brutalist 1950s communist replacement that is being allowed to slowly decay.

as well as the nicer one:

It’s not all doom and gloom however. Strangely, whilst the city is ugly, its citizens are beautiful – in fact I have never seen so many attractive people all in one place. Walking around the city centre was like walking around a film set or through the pages of a fashion catalogue. Also, its really worth noting that Lodz’ inhabitants have an unusually sunny and friendly disposition – the nicest folk in Poland I have encountered so far.

You can find out more about the once thriving industrial city here and about its dark past here.

Also, check his post on the beautiful city of Wrocław (below). There are some lovely descriptions of Wrocław’s architecture, its people and some great tips for eating out too.

I wonder if any of you have been to Lodz or Wroclaw – if so, what do you think? Do you agree with Pete’s impressions of those places?

All images ©thelondoneer, reproduced with the author’s permission

]]> http://thepolskiblog.co.uk/2009/03/visit-poland-with-the-londoneer/feed/ 4 http://thepolskiblog.co.uk/2009/02/world-press-photo-2009-the-polish-entries/ http://thepolskiblog.co.uk/2009/02/world-press-photo-2009-the-polish-entries/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:13:42 +0000 Michał http://thepolskiblog.co.uk/?p=727

If you’re into photography, you are probably aware of the yearly World Press Photo awards and subsequent exhibitions.

The 2009 winners gallery has recently been published and I’m glad to see a few Polish photographers made it to the top 3 in a few categories. Wojciech Grzedzinski’s picture of the Georgian Conflict or Tomasz Gudzowaty’s Mongolian Child Jockey are some of the 104 Polish entries this year which got noticed by the jury. (I won’t reproduce them here for copyright reasons, hence the links to the WPF website).

When you look at the amazing quality of the pictures submitted by the finest photographers from around the world, it’s actually quite a fantastic achievement to get noticed in five different categories.

One of the less immediately obvious winners (he was a runner-up in the Daily Life category, to be precise) was Tomasz Wiech and his study of life in large corporations based in Kraków in Poland.

When seen separately they look like casual office snaps uploaded to Flickr, but when studied together they paint a rather bleak picture of life in a large international corporation: open-plan offices, bland interiors, bored faces in meetings, desperate attempts to enliven dead spaces on the outskirts of a culturally rich and vibrant city.

You can see the entire series called simply ‘Corporation’ on his website along with other pictures from his collection, including another bleak study of life in a large city, Park.

As a budding photographer all I can say I wish one day I could get noticed too….

Image © Binder.donedat via Flickr used under CC licence

She’s 34, a well-known Polish journalist, the editor of National Geographic Poland and a seasoned traveller. Her name is Martyna Wojciechowska and she’s just started a photoblog, where she will be uploading pics from her travels.

She’s also planning to upload older pictures from her ealier travels, so if you’re into challenging expeditions – from the Arctic Circle to conquering the highest mountain in the Americas, the Aconcagua – this might be a photoblog to bookmark.

Image © Martyna Wojciechowska via story.pl

As you’ve probably noticed, my blog automatically displays random pictures from Flickr, tagged with the word ‘Poland’. These are not my pictures, although sometimes I wish they were.

And through this small Flickr plugin I discovered the amazing photography of a Poland-based woman who calls herself Violen. Her Violen’s Photography Flickr photostream is a joy to explore. She is based in the southern city of Bielsko Biała, not far from where I was born. She travels all over the south, charting everything – from beautiful architecture to urban decay and mountain landscapes.

Some of her pictures are taken in the advanced HDR technique, giving them this extra depth and a bit surreal dimension. All of them are very atmospheric and quite rich, both in texture and in content. If this is your first contact with Polish landscape, well, sit back and enjoy.

(Hope you also like the pics and it’s not just me being overly sentimental here.)

Image © Violen’s Photography, all rights reserved

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… but still charming. Polish autumn as seen by me last week.

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