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Cultural Production of the Real Through Picturing Difference in the Polish Media: 1940s—1960s
to Susan Sontag, a photo essay as a genre became established during the Second
World War, but it was in Magnum after 1947 that artists assigned themselves the
task of creating a chronicle of their times, of war and peace, of providing a balanced
testimony free from chauvinist prejudices (Sontag 2010: 44-45). This was also
the time of the triumph of photography as a main medium and of photographers
without frontiers.
The photographs published in Swiat in most cases represented high aesthetic
values. Apart from propaganda elements, in which the Other was seen as the class
enemy, the subjects of everyday life prevailed. Today they provide an example of
documenting Poland and Polish daily life in the 1940s—1950s. Their subject matter
covered a young and joyous country in 1957, Poland’s ethnic and religious diver¬
sity, urban streets and balls, Warsaw’s bars and theatres. Foreign subjects also ap¬
peared, including Chinese landscapes and the revolution, exotic India, the history
of Leningrad, a traditional Egyptian wedding reception, and animals in Sudan.
Similar topics could be found in another illustrated weekly, Przekrdj, beside
Polish motifs, everyday life practices, and images from around the world. In 1956
(Fig. 10) the weekly published a report from “our own correspondent” from Bra¬
zil, about a stay of a Pole, Zygmunt Sulistrowski, among wild Camayura Indians
(which means the “Tribe of the Sun).
The aim of the weeklies was to present people and society that had already
recovered from the horrors of war, that were focused on the future, that were devel¬
oping and open to the world, and that even participated in the world’s research on
equal terms. In accordance with the attitude stating that life took place and played
out within interpersonal relations, cheerfulness prevailed in these representations;
there was a lack of images of destruction and problems and the recipient received
scenes wherein a human being with the recipient's own aspirations and hopes took
centre stage. Such an effect was achieved mostly through what was not shown. The
pictures appear to be true yet are superficial, not penetrating what is hidden behind
the facade; the weeklies were making imagery characteristic of the 1950s and later.
Boundaries in the photographs from around the world were practically invis¬
ible. They can be seen only in the case of such representations as the photo in Fig¬
ure 10, in which the differentiating criterion is the civilization. The Indians from
Brazil were shown in a classic manner—as lower beings—from the perspective
of their culture’s development. The pictures of the world had a positive character
and they were reduced to stressing the difference, presenting these people as living
outside our own community. We doubt whether these pictures were consistent
with the everyday experience of the people because of the reality of the Cold War
and its consequences living in a closed society with images of the external world,
controlled by the authorities.
Both weeklies, Swiat and Przekréj, maintained a high artistic level, and the
audience treated both these magazines as the “prettier” picture of “our” reality of
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