The mundane districts of Warsaw seem to be much more interesting to photograph for me than a postcard, glittering places.
With these places for the show, attractive for tourists, everything often seems perfect, well-groomed, pampered in every detail, like many people’s photos on Instagram. Thus, entitled glittering places (e.g., Old Town in Warsaw) seem to me to be very dull. For me, nothing is interesting there in terms of photography. There are so many pictures of these glittering places that going there would be a tedious activity. Warsaw’s Old City photographically bores me. Of course, I already wrote that there are no wrong places to take pictures, but I chose something completely different. The truth is that I prefer to walk around ordinary Warsaw blocks of flats because this is where you can feel, literally and figuratively, the actual urban tissue.
While strolling through usual Warsaw streets, we can see the authentic face of the city.
Just as after photos on Instagram, you can conclude that someone is perfect and leads an ideal life. After the full-color city photos, you get the impression that we are in the perfect place. This is all false because there are no pristine people and ideal cities and areas. Undoubtedly, I prefer to talk with someone authentic, an actual person about usual, daily issues rather than observing one’s full-of-joy colorful, Instagram-like, mundane pictures. Warsaw’s suburbs, full of grey concrete and dark asphalt, are the city’s guts far more interesting than the beautiful, full of the make-up face of the capital of Poland that we can see on postcards. For me, this statement does not have to describe only Warsaw.
While strolling in, e.g., Budapest or Riga, I preferred to go to the suburbs full of blocks with neglected facades and staircases. Visiting the Old Towns in such cities is for me something to be ticked, and that’s it. I came, saw glittering places, and went to mundane places to take photos there.
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PS
I wrote this text on the 31st of July, 2021.
