To see the other Man, such as he is, with all his virtues and drawbacks, beautiful or not, in everyday life and festive ecstasies. It looks simple, but few can achieve it. Because one has to truly like people to see them entirely. Not everyone is as open, and not everyone has the gift of seeing.

Andrzej Baturo has got both of the skills. He devoted two-thirds of his fifty years of taking photographs to describing people inhabiting in great numbers the borders between the Odra and the Bug Rivers. He has been doing that with passion and cordiality, focusing, first of all, on the most simple citizens, who used to run daily in quilted jackets, while they would walk in well- creased trousers on Sundays.

In Baturo`s photographs, can we see a very detailed image of Poland,
crammed into a standard borrowed from the East.

That is how the ordinary inhabitants of Polish little towns and villages presented themselves in the 20th century. For many of us it was a chance for promotion to a higher rank and extraction from customs and places in the social structure, that were consolidated by many generations. Have they managed? Supposedly, the revolution took place and everyone gained similar educational and occupational chances. But is it really possible to break out of customs and the way of living that had been created for ages? Is any decree of an authority, even the most radical and omniscient one, able to change human mentality? Perhaps the persistent ones managed to jump into that “new, great world”, but most of them stayed where they had been before.

Baturo says with his photographs, being far from any propaganda, that the ideas of the People`s Republic were pure utopia. Reality did not resemble in anything the lofty slogans of the propagandists of the red system. To show that, one did not have to go to places of epochal events, when workers would set party committees on fire. To notice how far it was from the creation of a “new Man”, it was enough to go to a beach, to attend an oath ceremony in the army or a football match. Baturo visited those seemingly meaningless places and watched the everyday behaviour, in banal situations, of the representatives of the workers-peasants` alliance.

The match Poland – England at the stadium in Chorzów was one of the more beautiful pages in the history of Polish football. But it were not the sportsmen and their fight for each ball that took Baturo`s attention. The author pointed the lens of his camera to the spectators. It has not been a time of aggressive fans yet – stadium brigands. An excursion to a stadium was like a holiday picnic. People could leave their boring, recurrent daily life to take part in an event that would give them great emotions. The tribunes were seated by the audience, experiencing, with whole their bodies, what was going on in the playground. There were songs and lofty slogans, still so kind in comparison to the ones scanned today – “Our boys – a pack of friends, we`re the winners today!” Flags were fluttering here and there. One of the flagmen presents himself as a revolution leader, taking the crowds to barricades. Two soldiers on the pass treat themselves to ice-creams. While matronly three persons, a woman surrounded by two men, drink something stronger in an awfully cultural manner, using glasses. If there is a fest it means that the attributes have to be solemn, too – jackets are obligatory in such a situation. Most of the audience have simple faces, marked with numerous wrinkles. Hair-dresses show actual fashion. Hair a la the Beatles dominates. Hair is long, not always clean, but obligatorily parted in a middle with a straight line. The longer the match, the bigger was the engagement of the audience, celebrating the moment with warming-up drinks. When the emotions were down, the tribunes of the stadium were crowded by bottle collectors, who bend under the weight of the glass gathered into big bags. The specific story about the triumph of Polish football is a deceitful vision of Polish society in 1970s. Baturo showed Polish fans only (the English were taken by Krzysztof Barański). Poland of „the early Gierek” (first secretary of the party) reflects in them like in a mirror. under the weight of the glass gathered into big bags. The specific story about the triumph of Polish football is a deceitful vision of Polish society in 1970s. Baturo showed Polish fans only (the English were taken by Krzysztof Barański). Poland of „the early Gierek” (first secretary of the party) reflects in them like in a mirror under the weight of the glass gathered into big bags. The specific story about the triumph of Polish football is a deceitful vision of Polish society in 1970s. Baturo showed Polish fans only (the English were taken by Krzysztof Barański). Poland of „the early Gierek” (first secretary of the party) reflects in them like in a mirror.

Drunkenness is one of the constant motifs in Baturo`s photography. But he shows drunkard`s customs without indulgence. It is a disease digesting too many fellow-citizens. He clearly showed that in his reportage about a sober room, where transported men are not able to control their bodies` reactions, behaving like inert bags. Travelling across Poland, with hope and anxiety, he watched the new generation. Army, teaching order, sense of duty, patriotism, and dexterity, and also being, for those little educated, a place of their future occupation in adult life, was for those young men a true school of life. A story about a change of a youngster into a man begins in front of the barracks` gate, where young recruits, still in civil clothes, are waiting for crossing the tangible threshold of men adultery. And here the shock comes, as the world on the other side of the barracks `gate is quite different, it holds man very cheap. The first step is hair-cutting. The time of innocence ends with curls falling downs. The next step is a naked assembly in front
of a doctor, who checks their ability for the needs of the army. Zero of intimacy, everybody with his privy parts on top. Their nakedness, insolently turning our attention to their genitals, confronting them, brings to our minds investigation done by vet doctors who check the possibilities of a boar or a stallion. It is one of the strongest elements of humiliation of young men at their first days in People`s Polish Army. And next comes the school of life in identical white t-shirts, “Russian slips” (blue pants, tied in waist with a ribbon), in garments, unifying everybody. Army changed them into an anonymous mass, without any distinguishing marks.

Only the oath and the arrival of families and girls breaks for a moment that constant order. An oath became a special fest in our culture, being the equivalent of the old custom of appointing somebody a man. The closest relatives are really moved then and they deeply experience, when their little Johnny becomes a true Mr. John. The oath, like all the holidays, is a short episode in a well-organised, uniformed daily life. Reality in the army is not as cheerful, which can be clearly seen in Andrzej Baturo`s photos. The stories about young soldiers or football fans of an extremely important match are classic, multi-photo reportages. Baturo became proficient in the system of creating the stories, and in the selection of images, which both tell a history and are attractive, perfectly composed frames, pulling an onlooker into the shown situation.

He tells equally well a story about the reality in Polish People`s Republic while working with single images. They are also built so as to suggestively influence the receiver. The needs of the press in the past and nowadays are mainly those singles, aggressive, attacking a reader with its composition rather than its meaning. But the point was to include an important message, often being far from what was expected by the authorities, in a nice, tempting frame. The most correct political system assumed sex equality, among others. Baturo notices that in a very specific way, with a little smile, as always in his photos, and sometimes with a pinch of irony. Like for example while taking the classical motif of three graces, present in art for ages. But his graces are thoroughly contemporary, they drink wine brand “wine” like a male, straight from the bottle, sitting in the centre of a town on a street bench. Have they fought for that kind of equality?

It looks similar on a beach, during holiday rest, they (female and male) all stiffen equally their bodies, exposing them to sun rays. However they are not able to seduce in one hundred percent, as their sun-suits look as if it had been nuns who had sewn for the women, without any trying of course, because women can not be as close to men. Baturo notices that the standards of the workers-peasants manners were not familiar to everybody in the years of people`s democracy. One of the protagonists of the beach rest, covers her face with a handkerchief against excessive sun rays and she does that not because of her health but not to look like a member of the working class, as too strong a tan suggested that one comes from a village or works at a strand at open air. Ladies were not burnet with sun or solar lamps as they are today. The author watches all the details closer, because they largely say about material crudeness and modesty of those times. He is more interested in a single man`s condition, who is not able to come above the ideological limits, influencing each detail, creating the frames of the daily life, rather than in the system`s oppressions, realised by proper state services. In the whole journalist work by Baturo there dominates an unfavourable opinion about the system of the Soviet roots, but it does not apply to ordinary people, who are warmly describes, as it was not their idea to live in such a reality.

The thread of the system oppressiveness comes on the margins of an interesting reportage “Operation Rot-Gut”. It is a story about militia, hunting illegal alcohol drinks producers in Polish country. Country used to be much more poor once than today, what can be seen in each photograph. When we look at their clothes, furniture, agricultural machines, farmyards, nobody wants to believe that it really looked like that. But the most astonishing are the devices for alcohol production. The slogan “A Pole will manage”, which appeared some time later, has it`s absolute confirmation in the work of the peasants in their cellars, barns, and house cubby-holes. They were really able to produce the national drink, accompanying people at the river Vistula for ages, from everything and everywhere. The militia visiting the peasants` farmyards used to hunt and destroy the illegal distilleries. But they are not convinced in that work. It is pure duty. Didn`t their fathers and grandfathers do the same, hiding under the watchful eye of authorities?

Besides the classic pathologies like drunkenness, Baturo analyses in his images pathologies being the straight result of the political system, mainly the lack of respect for work and property. The photo showing men pulling a piece of a pig along a dirty street is a shocking image, but it precisely describes real socialism - nobody cared about anything, unless he or she were forced to. The photo with kids pulling a cart with waste paper makes us remember that it was impossible to get an A from behaviour at school if you did not deliver a few kilos of waste paper.

Mass events, organized by authorities for working people of towns and villages were an interesting form of entertainment. Selling goods that were normally absent in trade was a kind of an attracting magnet. But those titbits were not available for everyone. Amateur artists could not leave the stage and go for queueing, because they where here for a different reason. Baturo does not show them during their show, which could also be interesting, but he photographs them a moment before coming onto the stage. They are standing in a group, they are young and well-built, but the main theme of the photo is their clothes. They wear half-transparent suits and we can see various t-shirts underneath, bras, and panties. Each element of the costume is different, depending on what a given girl managed to buy. Therefore we can see flowers, elephants, or stripes showing through the dresses. The organizer of the group used to give the upper garment, but still it was just what he managed to buy, nothing more. Perhaps that are just details, but they show everyday reality of the system in its whole absurdity. There is a multitude of such tasty pieces in Baturo`s pictures.

Baturo takes sociological themes less often during the great changes of the 1980s. Living far from the places of the epoch-making events he lets the younger generation to document the time of fight. Proved with his whole photography, he took a pacifistic attitude – he is not interested in battles and social fights. All his photographs, in their own way, are a warm story about a man, wrestling daily with history – in an empty shop, at work, where “whether you sit or lie you must earn two thousand zloty”, at a grey street or a political party picnic. Although, one can fight with the system even in those places, Baturo did not like fighting. His attitude stays in the main stream of humanistic photography, focusing its attention at ordinary people. He deals with his heros with unknown faces and lives with tenderness. He tells a story about them with a slight smile, showing their wrestling with the limits imposed from above. It seemed that they were classic representatives of society, who had little influence on historical processes. But it appeared that it was them, after all, those anonymous citizens, invisible in everyday life, were a causative force of the great social and political change in our country.

The photographs by Baturo show the truth about the years 1950s-80s in a completely different way than intervention reportages with combative attitude. The analysis of the reality was done on the basis of meaningful details. Those, often metaphorical details brought out the absurdities of the system. The pictures, filled with them, foreshadowed the fact that if something is not logical at all, it can not last forever. The description of Polish customs of the time of communism, shown by Andrzej Baturo, is an extremely important photo document, allowing us to understand the passed time through the elements that are most typical for that period. And although it was not fanny at all, the photos which say about it, are not sad in themselves, although they lead to sad reflections, because people tried to live above the system limitations, as far as it was only possible.

When the system change had been done Andrzej Baturo softened his photography and turned the lens of his camera into the space he chosen as his new place. Starting in 1990, he has been focusing on giant mountains – sublime, mysterious, beautiful, and sinister. And again he starts to create important images, but they have a completely different character. He turns our attention towards harmony of nature and its power, that can not be defeated by Man.

© Andrzej Zygmuntowicz
This essay was included in the book "Andrzej Baturo: 50 years of photography", Bielsko-Biala 2015

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