This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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About the ArtistRafał Milach is a visual artist, activist, photographer and educator. His work focuses on power relations between society and systemic oppression. Author of protest books and critical publications on state control. Milach is a professor at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School of Silesian University in Katowice, Poland. He has received scholarships from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Magnum Foundation, and European Cultural Foundation. Finalist of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Polityka Passports Award and a winner of the World Press Photo competition. Co-founder of The Archive of Public Protests and Sputnik Photos collectives. His works have been widely exhibited worldwide, and can be found in the public institutional collections worldwide. Milach is an associate member of Magnum Photos.
About the ArchiveThe Archive of Public Protest is a semi-open platform for distributing images connected with social and political tensions in Poland from 2015 until the present. |
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Truth in Photography: Were you the person that started The Archive of Public Protest?
Rafał Milach: It was my idea, but it was rather co-starting because I would never have done it alone. I knew that I had to invite all these photographers that shared a similar status as I had at the time, like being at protests and not being commissioned to document them, but instead being a concerned citizen documenting the protests.
TiP: Why did you feel this need to document these protests?
Milach: Back in 2015 right wing populist government took over the power and since the very beginning started to violate the constitution, politicize the judiciary and many other issues followed. People went out to the streets, and I joined the crowds to make noise, shout out my discord and be part of the community. Only after a while I recalled myself that I’m a photographer and I can channel this energy into the images.
Rafał Milach: It was my idea, but it was rather co-starting because I would never have done it alone. I knew that I had to invite all these photographers that shared a similar status as I had at the time, like being at protests and not being commissioned to document them, but instead being a concerned citizen documenting the protests.
TiP: Why did you feel this need to document these protests?
Milach: Back in 2015 right wing populist government took over the power and since the very beginning started to violate the constitution, politicize the judiciary and many other issues followed. People went out to the streets, and I joined the crowds to make noise, shout out my discord and be part of the community. Only after a while I recalled myself that I’m a photographer and I can channel this energy into the images.
The sixth day of protests against the tightening of the anti-abortion law. Warsaw, Poland, October 28, 2020. © Rafał Milach / Archive of Public Protest
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The March of Care for the Cheated at the Belarus-Poland border. Warsaw, Poland, November 20, 2021. © Rafał Milach / Archive of Public Protest
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TiP: How do you sustain the protest without social change happening? Even here in the United States, it's difficult to sustain that energy. And the people who are the oppressors understand that sustainability is complicated.
Milach: I wish I had an answer for that. It's super hard, because the protests are connected to high adrenaline, and you cannot be in that state forever. And this is where I see the power of The Archive of Public Protests, because when the protests are gone, the imagery we’ve been collecting can keep the discourse alive. Since not a single issue has been resolved that the protests were advocating for or against, we can animate the archive in various spaces: from exhibitions and performative actions to publishing or conferences. We want to use all possible platforms to communicate about the burning issues we have to face. We also have to think about it in a longer-term perspective since it’s rather a marathon than a sprint. Lot of activists and photographers deal with burnout when the adrenaline drops down, so the self-care is also important in this context. When I think about the agency of the protests and all protest-related activities it’s not as hopeless as it may seem. I believe some deeper processes in terms of social change have been activated. The young generation that has become a core power behind pro-choice or climate change protests and the scale of 2020-2021 women rights movement showed that there is hope.
Milach: I wish I had an answer for that. It's super hard, because the protests are connected to high adrenaline, and you cannot be in that state forever. And this is where I see the power of The Archive of Public Protests, because when the protests are gone, the imagery we’ve been collecting can keep the discourse alive. Since not a single issue has been resolved that the protests were advocating for or against, we can animate the archive in various spaces: from exhibitions and performative actions to publishing or conferences. We want to use all possible platforms to communicate about the burning issues we have to face. We also have to think about it in a longer-term perspective since it’s rather a marathon than a sprint. Lot of activists and photographers deal with burnout when the adrenaline drops down, so the self-care is also important in this context. When I think about the agency of the protests and all protest-related activities it’s not as hopeless as it may seem. I believe some deeper processes in terms of social change have been activated. The young generation that has become a core power behind pro-choice or climate change protests and the scale of 2020-2021 women rights movement showed that there is hope.
Women's strike. Blockade of the streets of Warsaw. A red smoke bomb covers a banner held by demonstrators. Warsaw, Poland, October 26, 2020. © Chris Niedenthal
Techno blockade. Krakow, October 28, 2020.
© Joanna Musiał |
Protest with a Polish version of Un violator en tu camino, a performance on violence against women. Warsaw, Poland, February 13, 2021. © Wojtek Radwanski
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TiP: In terms of the archive, what is the focus at this moment?
Milach: At this point, we're still in the streets and we are still documenting since as I said not a single issue has been resolved. Additionally Russian invasion on Ukraine changed the entire geopolitical landscape in the region so we have focused on anti-war and solidarity with Ukraine protests. We’ve just published the Strike Newspaper dedicated to these protests. We’re also participating in museum shows and festivals in Poland and abroad that deal with political issues. We're doing lectures, presentations, interviews and keep distributing the Strike Newspapers. Sometimes I feel like more of a PR person than a photographer, but I want this archive to be visible. We have to keep the discourse alive so it's now part of my job.
Milach: At this point, we're still in the streets and we are still documenting since as I said not a single issue has been resolved. Additionally Russian invasion on Ukraine changed the entire geopolitical landscape in the region so we have focused on anti-war and solidarity with Ukraine protests. We’ve just published the Strike Newspaper dedicated to these protests. We’re also participating in museum shows and festivals in Poland and abroad that deal with political issues. We're doing lectures, presentations, interviews and keep distributing the Strike Newspapers. Sometimes I feel like more of a PR person than a photographer, but I want this archive to be visible. We have to keep the discourse alive so it's now part of my job.
© Grzegorz Wełnicki
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Protest against the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal on abortion in Wrzesnia. September 31, 2020.
© Michał Adamski |
TiP: You mentioned the burnout factor. Do you think there's a kind of trauma fatigue?
Milach: Yeah. All combined together. There's a war just behind the corner and there's a real threat that it expands. You just live with this tension even if you know that your situation is incomparably better than the one of your Ukrainian peers. Except of that, we have our local fights too, that were somehow overwhelmed by the war situation, but human rights are still violated, we still have a humanitarian crisis at the Poland-Belarus border, judiciary system is still politicized, right wing populism is spreading not even mentioning the climate catastrophe in the background all that is adding up to this fatigue and burnout for sure.
Milach: Yeah. All combined together. There's a war just behind the corner and there's a real threat that it expands. You just live with this tension even if you know that your situation is incomparably better than the one of your Ukrainian peers. Except of that, we have our local fights too, that were somehow overwhelmed by the war situation, but human rights are still violated, we still have a humanitarian crisis at the Poland-Belarus border, judiciary system is still politicized, right wing populism is spreading not even mentioning the climate catastrophe in the background all that is adding up to this fatigue and burnout for sure.
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TiP: There’s a statement that Robert Kaplan once made, which was “The truth is the best propaganda.” What do you think about that statement?
Milach: What’s the truth? Everybody’s got his or her own truth. Right? TiP: Well, I think that's true. But when we start talking about these kinds of critical situations, the war, the problems with the refugees, these issues related to reproductive rights. There is this battle for information. There is right and there's wrong. There's so much misinformation. There is the tendency sometimes in the art world, where people lose a sense of responsibility and it's convenient to dismiss the idea of truth. Milach: It really depends on where you stand, because if you would ask majority of Russian people, they would deny all the war crimes, they would say the news, the pictures and videos are manipulated. So, it's really an information war with an extensive presence of propaganda. You really have to struggle to keep the authority of certain opinions, or facts even. And that's hard. TiP: It is. I very much appreciate what you're doing. For me, the photograph is always political. Milach: Always. It’s quite interesting because people that are on the other side of the barricades or of the values that we represent in The Archive of Public Protest, they would say that we are nothing else but propaganda, because we take a very strong position against certain values, and we don’t objectify the events. It’s strictly connected to the imbalance of power. And we stand on the side of the ones who are discriminated and abused by the state. But it's also connected with hard facts that people are dying, and you cannot deny that. Or people's rights are violated. You can't deny that. |
The blockade of the Ministry of National Education is a gesture of solidarity with teachers and scientific institutions, which Minister Czarnek threatens with repression for supporting the Women's Strike. People protest in Warsaw against the decision of the Constitutional Court in the case of abortion. There has already been a month of protests, which have spread all over the country. Warsaw, Poland, November 23, 2020. © Adam Lach
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© Wojtek Radwanski
© Alicja Lesiak
Another day in a wave of Women's Strike protests in Poland, after the Constitutional Tribunal passed a controversial verdict that in practice almost completely prohibits abortion in Poland. Police are guarding a villa where the Polish prime minister and Jarosław Kaczyński are placed. October 23, 2020. © Paweł Starzec
