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Cultural Production of the Real Through Picturing Difference in the Polish Media: 1940s—1960s
protecting grown-up people and children is seen in Figure 6, where the soldiers “are
tending to” the children whose parents were murdered. This type of photograph,
in which soldiers are shown taking care of children or offering them food, is seen
repeatedly (e.g., the Nazis liked taking such photographs of themselves in Poland
[see Demski 2015: 60] as a gesture of protection and power). The content of the
photographs is contrasted by the manner of constructing difference. In the first
case (Figs 1-4), the government is together with the people, although separated
from them. In the photograph in Figure 5, the authority figure is “beside” the
people. In these representations there is no room for variability—at that stage it is
no time to speak of blurred boundaries between us and the Others. This is a time
of protecting the external boundaries but also time for political mobilization and
for consolidation of society.
From the period of the postwar years comes the sports album, presenting the
photographs of the sportsmen’s parade in Constitution Square in Warsaw (1952).
The event took place in a new quarter built on the ruined city of Warsaw and had
a character of sportsmanship combined with confirmation of the new socialist val¬
ues. The youth displayed physical prowess, but also their ideological bonds with the
USSR; on the picture they are carrying a portrait of Joseph Stalin (Fig. 7). Ordi¬
nary school students also participated in the parade (Fig. 8). The motif of working
youth, which now was given a chance to receive education, is also visible in Fig¬
ure 8. In order to function, a society needs to construct strong external boundaries,
but it also has to arouse a strong spirit of revival, joining the community in a new
context. These two elements—one stressing the boundaries and differences that
separate us from the Others and the Other one, focused on evoking and confirm¬
ing the homogeneity of, let us say, an imagined community based on common
values and notions—complement each other.
In contrast to the previous photos, in these we will not find a clearly marked
boundary; they present the construction of a new community. The line visible in
the photographs and the separation of parade members from the authorities’ stand
represents only an internal line, showing the unity and integration of the author¬
ity with the crowd. Where the first photographs documented the act of uniting
new lands with Poland through personal participation of the highest authorities,
the photographs from the parade accented more the enthusiasm and rebirth of
ordinary people and their integration within the new state. Both albums were to
confirm the successes of a new government in building a new community.
Similar to the previous photographs, these (as media themselves also in a sense)
corresponded to the reality registered in its most important moments in the collec¬
tive life. They produced the real more in a sense of delivering convincing represen¬
tations of the growing new society. Such albums were a memento of the authori¬
ties’ activities from that period of time. The majority of the frames presented the
enthusiasm of the participants of the group event and their presence in Warsaw,
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