One of Chris Niedenthal’s images of Poland in the 1980s — he called it “Everything’s Gray.” I wish I’d taken more photos of the parts of Poland I knew that looked like this because they’re gone. That’s probably a good thing, but I wish I’d photographed those places myself.
There was a bar in my village that I almost never entered. It was the GS-owski bar and even in the mid-90s, it looked like one would always imagine a bar to look in a communist country.
Well, the danger in feeding the stereotype is that you lose the nuance. For example, you know of course that most Poles did not regard their cities, towns, villages as being gray. I certainly did not. Those same buildings that appear so monochromatic, were familiar places where friends lived. In colorful interiors. With parquet floors. If you leave behind photos of the exteriors, you forget about or at least gloss over what’s inside. Though I have no doubt that bars had nothing to brag about inside: we called them “speluny.” Full of men drunk on cheap booze. Ugh.