"In 1959, Gerald Howson was sent to Poland by >>The Queen<< magazine. He was supposed to come back to England with photographs depicting the Cold War reality of our country. This inconspicuous Englishman who did not speak any Polish packed two Leica cameras in his backpack along with a portable darkroom. His journey began in Lublin, continued to Krakow, and ended in Warsaw. He also visited Auschwitz, from which only one photograph survived; this, however, is a very important one. For Gerald, it was the most important photograph from the whole trip.
“He knew about the wartime tragedy of Poles, but he did not know the details of this tragedy. Walking the streets of Krakow, Lublin, and Warsaw, he did not make any photographic judgments. He observed, he took pictures of whatever that, in his eyes, was not “British”. After studying painting in London, Howson had phenomenal abilities, yet he used them subtly.
“He did not want an overdrawn artistry to cover the task that he had to do: to immortalize the reality of the Gomułka-era Poland—depicting not in a false mirror, but showing the truth through an aesthetically sensitive lens. From this restraint, a cycle of unique photographs was born."
(Bogdan Frymorgen, curator of the exhibition)
Howson spent a few days in Krakow. He took photographs of the former Jewish district of Kazimierz, the Communist fêtes, the street fairs, children, and daily rituals. There are also photographs from the district of Nowa Huta. "I was fascinated with Krakow", he said. "I was especially interested in Kazimierz. It looked as if it came from a book by Dostoyevsky: half-deserted, stripped off its past. I remember the historical town centre and the horrifying, in its style, Nowa Huta." Even though he did not speak Polish, he was not afraid of coming close—he was interested in faces, everyday situations, and the atmosphere of Krakow.
