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Zbigniew Libera, Magdalena Sztandara
cial organizer of these research projects was the Institute of the History of Material
Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (or PAN, established, respec¬
tively, in 1953 and 1951) and its branch in Cracow (Jasiewicz & Slattery 1995).
‘The field research was led by Roman Reinfuss, who according to Przemystaw Bur¬
chard had “a lot of energy and creativity and sense of organization” (Burchard
1964: 18). These projects described by their participants as “research events” (Ibid.)
were characterized by intensity, massive scale, and versatility. It is worth mention¬
ing that a large group of young researchers came to the selected “headquarters”
in the village and they included students of ethnology, art, and architecture and
besides them the photographer, driver, a cook, and tutors.* Usually research camps
lasted a month and had a specific rhythm and regular schedule. According to the
recollections of Burchard and Dziegiel: “one day we spent in the field, next one at
the ‘base’ handling the data” (Burchard 1964: 16); “from dawn till dusk we wrote
reports from our observations and interviews” (Dziegiel 1996: 225). On the very
first day, each of the young ethnographers was assigned a specific topic to research.
Most often it was folk architecture, folk art in general, weaving, clothing, and vari¬
ous crafts (carpentry or pottery) and a wide range of material culture. At the same
time, drafters and photographers, who basically worked for various ethnographers
were supposed to document these items and artefacts in a fast and professional way
(cf. Burchard 1964).
It seems that there were two purposes of the ethnographic camps taking place
in the second half of the last century, which encompassed three concepts: sen¬
timent, authenticity, salvage. The first purpose was preserving the observed and
audible facts from the traditional culture and enriching the ethnographic archive.
The second was directly connected with preserving the “authenticity” of culture
and making the field research into something particularly important and salutary.
‘The necessity of rapid and ground exploration focused primarily on material cul¬
ture could be reduced to what George Marcus described as a mode of “salvage
ethnography”. In this model, the ethnographer takes the role of the one who is
able, despite the fundamental change, “to salvage a cultural state on the verge of
transformation” (Marcus 1986: 165). The guides and mentors (in particular Ro¬
man Reinfuss) of young ethnographers in the field quite persuasively, as it seems,
explained the need for this type of research. He emphasized inter alia, that proces¬
sion of urban civilization displaces, destroys and causes the decline of traditional
folk culture (Burchard 1964).
The answer for the coming threat was a quick but thorough grounding search
of traditional artefacts in order to save and rescue them from destruction.
One can guess that each of the camps brought huge “yields”: thousands of pages
of interviews and thousands of drawings, plans, sketches, and photographs. How¬
ever it is difficult to forget that the supposed mass scale and speed of conducting
* Camp in 1952 in two-week batches counted 88 participants and every two days 4 trucks left the base.