Oldal 39 [39]
Cultural Production of the Real Through Picturing Difference in the Polish Media: 1940s—1960s
‘The images, constructed in this way, due to the increasing durability and inten¬
sity of contact with the recipient, possessed a power strong enough to make their
recipients succumb to them. After the fall of the imperia and the rise of the new or¬
der in Europe and the world, the very subject of difference and otherness activated
representations. On the one hand, this was to describe the changing world; on the
other, the images of the Others revealed the meanings that, although exotic, were
already present on the cognitive horizon of the group. Thus, they also told much
about the group itself.
A society defines its collective identity by stressing differences with the Others,
while images of a given group are never permanent and have to be continually con¬
firmed in encounters with the Other. But the images are produced as a result of the
messages of individual media or content yet also in the dynamic configurations of
these elements. In this manner new forms of representation are being born.
Firstly, the 1940s, the 1950s, and subsequent years differ from the previous
periods in the change of context (the end of the war, a new political division in
eastern Europe). Then, new outlooks appear, most often in reaction to actions and
ways of thinking characteristic of the previous period. Finally, the significance of
the new media (radio, television) emerges and increases.
The routes through which cultural memory is transported form a very broad
topic. For the purposes of the present article I present visual materials coming from
three sources—photographs from commemorative albums presented to the chair¬
man of the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) during his visits to various regions
of Poland; the illustrated weeklies Swiat (‘The World’ 1951-1969)"' and Przekréj
(‘Cross-Section’)—an interesting example of presenting the world for the Polish
audience in accordance with the spirit of the humanist reportage; and the accounts
of the Vietnam War printed in the local Polish press (1966-1969)."
Making Spatial Oneness, Territory, and the New Authorities (in the Late 1940s)
Commemorative albums'’ containing visual materials that were never put into
public circulation form an interesting source. Such albums were presented to the
secretaries of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) who were inspecting a given
region of Poland or visiting it on the occasion of a specific ceremony.'* The albums
contain photographs that, on the one hand, present the achievements of the re¬
gion, its enterprises, and schools and that, on the other hand, document the pres¬
1 The photojournalists of the illustrated weekly Swiat (1951-1969) were Krzysztof Jarochowski, Jan
Kosidowski, Wiestaw Prazuch, and Wladystaw Stawny.
2 "The illustrations were published with the courtesy of the Museum of Independence in Warsaw, the
National Library in Warsaw, and the Polska Press.
15 "They are deposited as a separate collection in the Museum of Independence in Warsaw.
14 Dedicated to the president of the Polish Peoples Republic, comrade Bolestaw Bierut, to commemorate
the visit to the ancient lands of the Piasts on April 13-14, 1946.
37