This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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About the PhotographerKarolina Gembara is a photographer, researcher and an activist. Her work revolves around issues like home, belonging, migration, changing lands, and identities. Recently, she has been focusing on the political situation in her home country. She is interested in using photography as a tool, a pretext for collaboration and creating processes. In 2013 she published her first book Fitting Rooms which reflects on the role of women in her generation. Between 2009 and 2016 Karolina was based in India and produced her second book When we lie down, grasses grow from us on the migratory experience (published by GOST books in 2019). In recent years she has undertaken several participatory projects with refugees and migrants. Karolina collaborates with The Archive of Public Protest and is a member of Sputnik Photos. Her PhD dissertation focuses on subjective narratives of historical migrations. She is based in Berlin and Warsaw. |
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Truth in Photography: Where are you based?
Karolina Gembara: I am based now between Warsaw and Berlin and as we are speaking I am in Kaunas, in Lithuania, on a residency program.
TiP: Talk a little bit about yourself as a photographer and the kind of work that you do.
Gembara: Yes, I'm a photographer in the first place, but then I'm also a researcher and an activist. And I think all those roles are somehow reflected in my work. And I started as a documentary photographer at Sputnik Photos, the collective that I'd been following for many years and had a great influence on me. I had been influenced by the approach of Sputnik photographers Rafał Milach, Adam Pańczuk, Michał Łuczak, and Jan Brykczyński.
After many years of trying to figure out what I would like to photograph and also not studying photography, but studying other things. I graduated with international relations, and then I studied journalism, art history, culture studies. So, I never really explored photography other than its context and the socio-political context for the photographic projects that I was trying to do. Then I was invited to join Sputnik.
Karolina Gembara: I am based now between Warsaw and Berlin and as we are speaking I am in Kaunas, in Lithuania, on a residency program.
TiP: Talk a little bit about yourself as a photographer and the kind of work that you do.
Gembara: Yes, I'm a photographer in the first place, but then I'm also a researcher and an activist. And I think all those roles are somehow reflected in my work. And I started as a documentary photographer at Sputnik Photos, the collective that I'd been following for many years and had a great influence on me. I had been influenced by the approach of Sputnik photographers Rafał Milach, Adam Pańczuk, Michał Łuczak, and Jan Brykczyński.
After many years of trying to figure out what I would like to photograph and also not studying photography, but studying other things. I graduated with international relations, and then I studied journalism, art history, culture studies. So, I never really explored photography other than its context and the socio-political context for the photographic projects that I was trying to do. Then I was invited to join Sputnik.
Bow. Exercises in Hospitality. © Karolina Gembara
TiP: What is Sputnik Photos?
Gembara: It's a collective of documentary photographers, established around 16 years ago, and it was a group of photographers from Eastern Europe. Back then there were members from other places like Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, and so on. At the moment there are six of us and we're all based in Poland. We've published many books, many collective projects together, and we also run an educational program. It's called Sputnik, but it’s a mentoring program where we teach documentary photographers to work on long-term projects. When I joined Sputnik and when I actually moved to Warsaw after many years of living in India, I used that opportunity to do something rather experimental compared to what Sputnik was doing. I started using photography as a tool to work with migrants and refugees in the city. I did a series of different projects that to some extent I would call participatory. Where documenting or making photographs was just a pretext to meet someone and to do something together. That's been my practice for the last five years. And at the same time, the situation in Poland became really difficult, in terms of politics. The very uncomfortable atmosphere around so many issues and the real danger of the law and regulations transforming into a very oppressive situation. So, I started a Ph.D. about the protest imagery that started flowing since 2015 into the media and social media. And I did some writings about that. And then Rafał had this idea, because he was already photographing the protests in Warsaw, to form a group of people that were also trying to document the protest. And that's where the archive was born. I thought that this was some great working material for me and for my research. I decided to join the APP, but more as a researcher. Not so much a photographer, but someone who would perhaps try to initiate discourse around the visual activism or the images of protest, what we're doing, how we're doing that and so on.
Gembara: It's a collective of documentary photographers, established around 16 years ago, and it was a group of photographers from Eastern Europe. Back then there were members from other places like Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, and so on. At the moment there are six of us and we're all based in Poland. We've published many books, many collective projects together, and we also run an educational program. It's called Sputnik, but it’s a mentoring program where we teach documentary photographers to work on long-term projects. When I joined Sputnik and when I actually moved to Warsaw after many years of living in India, I used that opportunity to do something rather experimental compared to what Sputnik was doing. I started using photography as a tool to work with migrants and refugees in the city. I did a series of different projects that to some extent I would call participatory. Where documenting or making photographs was just a pretext to meet someone and to do something together. That's been my practice for the last five years. And at the same time, the situation in Poland became really difficult, in terms of politics. The very uncomfortable atmosphere around so many issues and the real danger of the law and regulations transforming into a very oppressive situation. So, I started a Ph.D. about the protest imagery that started flowing since 2015 into the media and social media. And I did some writings about that. And then Rafał had this idea, because he was already photographing the protests in Warsaw, to form a group of people that were also trying to document the protest. And that's where the archive was born. I thought that this was some great working material for me and for my research. I decided to join the APP, but more as a researcher. Not so much a photographer, but someone who would perhaps try to initiate discourse around the visual activism or the images of protest, what we're doing, how we're doing that and so on.
TiP: In what year did the APP start?
Gembara: 2019. But several members were already photographing the streets. Let's say from 2015 and 16. October 2015 was the time when the right-wing government came to power in Poland, and almost immediately people took to the streets, and it was just escalating since then, and we have been having different issues and different waves of protest since then. So the images were being taken from 2015-16, but only in 2019, Rafał approached other photographers who are doing that work to come together as the archive and to establish a website, this online collection of images.
TiP: For you, where does the truth of photography lie? Or is there a truth in photography? How would you finish the sentence, Truth in photography is?
Gembara: I could give a couple of answers depending on the context, when I'm trying to talk about my own work or the APP, or how I look at the photography in general. It’s about honesty. Not so much the person who's trying to photograph or to create, but it's about the honesty of certain relationships between all these actors of photography. The truth probably lies in recognizing how we are interrelated. How photography is a collaborative process. How every participant of this event of photography has the right and potential and the capital to unpack. To be truthful is to acknowledge this potential equality, the civil potential between all of us in photography. I don't like to see photography as something being practiced by the person who has been trained to photograph. But I like to see it from many different angles, discuss it, discuss how different people read it, discuss who's taking these photographs and what's visible, what's not. It's about admitting that there are so many of us involved in photography and everybody could have a voice here. Everybody could interpret, everybody could change, disseminate, use in many different ways. It's a very multi-layered event. I think I would use that word that Ariella Azoulay proposes, that this is something that is happening, not only happening in the moment of taking a photograph, but something that is happening later, when we share, when we use, when we discuss, when we try to unpack things, and that everybody can do it. Not only the image makers and not only the theoreticians and so on.
TiP: That's a very good point, because the honesty of photography is the fact that it is an interaction. It's a person with the camera and it's either a place or a person and the way in which the photographer frames that reality. Sometimes it can be deliberate, but often times in a crisis situation or a rapidly changing situation, the response is spontaneous, but it builds upon a certain level of interaction, and maybe sometimes the lack of interaction. Then there's the ethical component. Because there's the rights of the photographer. There are the rights of the people who are the subjects of the photographs.
Gembara: Obviously, but at the same time, I often feel like defending photographers anyway, especially if people practice socially engaged photography or art. There's an attempt to scrutinize and scan and to look at our work and our intentions. And this is all good, but apart from probably a couple of cases where we can clearly talk about some exploitation, many photographers do have very good intentions in depicting political crises or humanitarian crises. And I feel that we judge them very easily and very quickly. Especially with the humanitarian crisis on the Belarusian and Polish border. There have been many discussions whether we should photograph people in distress, how we should do it, and so on. And I think this is a very important discussion, and we do need these images. We have to obviously be careful and reflect on that. But these images are often the only evidence of that existence, of that presence, of those people. When there’s no media, there’s an emergency state, no one is allowed to go and document and talk to people or intervene or even help them because even activists or doctors are banned from that region. So I feel that despite everything, these images are necessary.
TiP: What is the objective of The Archive of Public Protest, and personally for you, what’s your objective?
Gembara: I cannot deny that the issues or the objectives of the protests that we photograph or document are very important to me. They speak about the values and about the problems that are very dear to me or the communities around me, women, the LGBT people, the migrants, and all kinds of minorities. So I'm very attached to most of the goals of the activists, the organizers, the people who would come to the protests, and I have no intention or desire to see it objectively or to speak about it objectively. Because my heart is over there, obviously. Another objective is to try to understand what this phenomena is and how it's changing our society and try to research these phenomenons. You know, there are things like a protest in a small town. I come from a very small town of like 15,000 inhabitants. And during the Women's Strike, the end of 2020, my hometown saw, probably for the first time in their recent history, a protest of women walking through the streets. So, for many reasons, this is important to me to see and to understand what makes them march. What kind of frustration level has been reached for them to do that. So this is still personal, but already slightly political. And I also feel that the archive could serve on many levels as evidence, because all these years we've been seeing police and politicians breaking the law, attacking people, being violent, being physical, and so on. And I feel like the presence of photographers is very necessary to create some kind of a visual archive of those times. For a different moment in the future where we can reflect on these things, on our abilities and our strength and our weaknesses, but also to look at the other side, what the other side did, what it was doing to us, and how it was being shown. It's a mix of all these personal and political reasons and it can't be really separated. But I'm also not interested in supporting that myth of objectivism of trying to look at the other side, trying to be symmetrical, and so on.
Gembara: 2019. But several members were already photographing the streets. Let's say from 2015 and 16. October 2015 was the time when the right-wing government came to power in Poland, and almost immediately people took to the streets, and it was just escalating since then, and we have been having different issues and different waves of protest since then. So the images were being taken from 2015-16, but only in 2019, Rafał approached other photographers who are doing that work to come together as the archive and to establish a website, this online collection of images.
TiP: For you, where does the truth of photography lie? Or is there a truth in photography? How would you finish the sentence, Truth in photography is?
Gembara: I could give a couple of answers depending on the context, when I'm trying to talk about my own work or the APP, or how I look at the photography in general. It’s about honesty. Not so much the person who's trying to photograph or to create, but it's about the honesty of certain relationships between all these actors of photography. The truth probably lies in recognizing how we are interrelated. How photography is a collaborative process. How every participant of this event of photography has the right and potential and the capital to unpack. To be truthful is to acknowledge this potential equality, the civil potential between all of us in photography. I don't like to see photography as something being practiced by the person who has been trained to photograph. But I like to see it from many different angles, discuss it, discuss how different people read it, discuss who's taking these photographs and what's visible, what's not. It's about admitting that there are so many of us involved in photography and everybody could have a voice here. Everybody could interpret, everybody could change, disseminate, use in many different ways. It's a very multi-layered event. I think I would use that word that Ariella Azoulay proposes, that this is something that is happening, not only happening in the moment of taking a photograph, but something that is happening later, when we share, when we use, when we discuss, when we try to unpack things, and that everybody can do it. Not only the image makers and not only the theoreticians and so on.
TiP: That's a very good point, because the honesty of photography is the fact that it is an interaction. It's a person with the camera and it's either a place or a person and the way in which the photographer frames that reality. Sometimes it can be deliberate, but often times in a crisis situation or a rapidly changing situation, the response is spontaneous, but it builds upon a certain level of interaction, and maybe sometimes the lack of interaction. Then there's the ethical component. Because there's the rights of the photographer. There are the rights of the people who are the subjects of the photographs.
Gembara: Obviously, but at the same time, I often feel like defending photographers anyway, especially if people practice socially engaged photography or art. There's an attempt to scrutinize and scan and to look at our work and our intentions. And this is all good, but apart from probably a couple of cases where we can clearly talk about some exploitation, many photographers do have very good intentions in depicting political crises or humanitarian crises. And I feel that we judge them very easily and very quickly. Especially with the humanitarian crisis on the Belarusian and Polish border. There have been many discussions whether we should photograph people in distress, how we should do it, and so on. And I think this is a very important discussion, and we do need these images. We have to obviously be careful and reflect on that. But these images are often the only evidence of that existence, of that presence, of those people. When there’s no media, there’s an emergency state, no one is allowed to go and document and talk to people or intervene or even help them because even activists or doctors are banned from that region. So I feel that despite everything, these images are necessary.
TiP: What is the objective of The Archive of Public Protest, and personally for you, what’s your objective?
Gembara: I cannot deny that the issues or the objectives of the protests that we photograph or document are very important to me. They speak about the values and about the problems that are very dear to me or the communities around me, women, the LGBT people, the migrants, and all kinds of minorities. So I'm very attached to most of the goals of the activists, the organizers, the people who would come to the protests, and I have no intention or desire to see it objectively or to speak about it objectively. Because my heart is over there, obviously. Another objective is to try to understand what this phenomena is and how it's changing our society and try to research these phenomenons. You know, there are things like a protest in a small town. I come from a very small town of like 15,000 inhabitants. And during the Women's Strike, the end of 2020, my hometown saw, probably for the first time in their recent history, a protest of women walking through the streets. So, for many reasons, this is important to me to see and to understand what makes them march. What kind of frustration level has been reached for them to do that. So this is still personal, but already slightly political. And I also feel that the archive could serve on many levels as evidence, because all these years we've been seeing police and politicians breaking the law, attacking people, being violent, being physical, and so on. And I feel like the presence of photographers is very necessary to create some kind of a visual archive of those times. For a different moment in the future where we can reflect on these things, on our abilities and our strength and our weaknesses, but also to look at the other side, what the other side did, what it was doing to us, and how it was being shown. It's a mix of all these personal and political reasons and it can't be really separated. But I'm also not interested in supporting that myth of objectivism of trying to look at the other side, trying to be symmetrical, and so on.
Stay Home, 2020. © Karolina Gembara
TiP: Talk more about your participatory projects.
Gembara: When it comes to these participatory projects, I want to approach people who've been foreign, different, who've lost their houses, and who arrived in Poland. I started that work in a situation where the so-called refugee crisis from 2015 and 16 didn't really arrive in Poland because of its right-wing government. So, I was interested in the refugees that did manage to arrive despite that or before that time, and who were never really noticed apart from NGO and activists. They’re really never part of any official policy. And at the same time, I didn't want to just photograph people, because I felt that perhaps my photography would freeze them and frame them in that one category of a refugee, when that is just one of many of their identities.
So, my very first idea was to invite people for a photography workshop and just basically share skills and educational experience, so I could teach photography and see what they have to say about Warsaw. So for example, there was this project called The New Warsovians, and I had a group of students from different places and they were developing a project that was about Warsaw, or about themselves. Then we made a publication, and these projects are always just a pretext to meet and to do something together. There were other issues popping out, because you're working with a group of people that is going through a very hard time in Poland when they're lacking social support. Every day they have to struggle with something. One of the participants of this workshop received a letter that said that she will be deported together with her mother. It was around the time of the publication and the exhibition that we organized. So, we got a lot of attention of the media because at the time it was a relatively new idea for a photography project in Warsaw. At the same time, we launched a petition for this particular person and her mom that gathered thousands and thousands of signatures from people all over Poland asking the authorities to let her stay. So, something that was unplanned, but just became part of this project, and eventually it was successful, which I feel is one of the greatest things that happened.
Then there was this reoccurring problem that I would hear about, and that was the fact that one refugee family could not find an apartment in Warsaw. They were staying in the refugee center outside of the city, in the forest, basically, where integration or going to school was a problematic thing. And the oldest daughter that I was teaching, she was responsible for looking for that apartment, making phone calls to potential landlords and explaining that they were a family of refugees, and they needed an apartment. And she would very often be rejected in the first sentence. So that was the idea for the next project, where I decided, okay, now I'm going to focus only on this, and through this process of finding an apartment for a refugee family I want to speak about how difficult it is for foreigners, especially from Eastern Europe, to start a normal life. They had all the papers, they could work, the children go to school, but they had to stay in these difficult conditions of the refugee center. So, we were looking for an apartment, and I was making phone calls, and I was trying to explain what we’re looking for. And I was recording these conversations. And as you can imagine, there were plenty of rejections, but also nasty comments towards refugees, until we found something. But it was super, super stressful. And I can't imagine what this very young girl was going through doing that herself in the language that she has just learned. We found the apartment. We helped the family to sign the contract, translate all the legal details to move. And this whole process was documented. And two experts on refugee housing were invited to speak about this problem in a separate movie that was made for this project. The girl I was working with, she took pictures in the refugee center to show how they lived. We took some pictures of this whole movement. There are these videos of people explaining why this is a problem and what housing discrimination is and so on. But the main goal was to just move that family, to make them feel comfortable, make them feel like they could have a new beginning in Warsaw. So, the images are there, but they were really secondary for this whole project. Maybe it's not so much about sharing the authorship as it is inviting people to bring their ideas. And I very much hope to benefit in the end from what's happening through the process, not from the images, but what's happening while the images are being created.
TiP: You can download the APP newspapers online, correct?
Gembara: Yes, you can. It's not the same, obviously, as the physical object. And we're doing whatever we can to distribute these newspapers in Poland. We've already, I think, published over 30,000 copies of different issues. And we're doing the distribution in two ways. One is through our photographers. So whenever they go to Warsaw, to their cities and towns, they take the copies along, and they either distribute during the protest that this particular newspaper is devoted to, or they leave it in different cultural centers, or places where people can just come and pick it up. And we've also paired with this bookshop in Warsaw, where everybody within Europe can order for free, and the bookshop sends it and only charges for the delivery. So that's one way also to send it around. Now, we also are trying to send some copies to the United States, and we're lucky to have support from friends who are trying to help us bring these newspapers and have them delivered to different places in New York, especially, because this is where they’re going to arrive.
Gembara: When it comes to these participatory projects, I want to approach people who've been foreign, different, who've lost their houses, and who arrived in Poland. I started that work in a situation where the so-called refugee crisis from 2015 and 16 didn't really arrive in Poland because of its right-wing government. So, I was interested in the refugees that did manage to arrive despite that or before that time, and who were never really noticed apart from NGO and activists. They’re really never part of any official policy. And at the same time, I didn't want to just photograph people, because I felt that perhaps my photography would freeze them and frame them in that one category of a refugee, when that is just one of many of their identities.
So, my very first idea was to invite people for a photography workshop and just basically share skills and educational experience, so I could teach photography and see what they have to say about Warsaw. So for example, there was this project called The New Warsovians, and I had a group of students from different places and they were developing a project that was about Warsaw, or about themselves. Then we made a publication, and these projects are always just a pretext to meet and to do something together. There were other issues popping out, because you're working with a group of people that is going through a very hard time in Poland when they're lacking social support. Every day they have to struggle with something. One of the participants of this workshop received a letter that said that she will be deported together with her mother. It was around the time of the publication and the exhibition that we organized. So, we got a lot of attention of the media because at the time it was a relatively new idea for a photography project in Warsaw. At the same time, we launched a petition for this particular person and her mom that gathered thousands and thousands of signatures from people all over Poland asking the authorities to let her stay. So, something that was unplanned, but just became part of this project, and eventually it was successful, which I feel is one of the greatest things that happened.
Then there was this reoccurring problem that I would hear about, and that was the fact that one refugee family could not find an apartment in Warsaw. They were staying in the refugee center outside of the city, in the forest, basically, where integration or going to school was a problematic thing. And the oldest daughter that I was teaching, she was responsible for looking for that apartment, making phone calls to potential landlords and explaining that they were a family of refugees, and they needed an apartment. And she would very often be rejected in the first sentence. So that was the idea for the next project, where I decided, okay, now I'm going to focus only on this, and through this process of finding an apartment for a refugee family I want to speak about how difficult it is for foreigners, especially from Eastern Europe, to start a normal life. They had all the papers, they could work, the children go to school, but they had to stay in these difficult conditions of the refugee center. So, we were looking for an apartment, and I was making phone calls, and I was trying to explain what we’re looking for. And I was recording these conversations. And as you can imagine, there were plenty of rejections, but also nasty comments towards refugees, until we found something. But it was super, super stressful. And I can't imagine what this very young girl was going through doing that herself in the language that she has just learned. We found the apartment. We helped the family to sign the contract, translate all the legal details to move. And this whole process was documented. And two experts on refugee housing were invited to speak about this problem in a separate movie that was made for this project. The girl I was working with, she took pictures in the refugee center to show how they lived. We took some pictures of this whole movement. There are these videos of people explaining why this is a problem and what housing discrimination is and so on. But the main goal was to just move that family, to make them feel comfortable, make them feel like they could have a new beginning in Warsaw. So, the images are there, but they were really secondary for this whole project. Maybe it's not so much about sharing the authorship as it is inviting people to bring their ideas. And I very much hope to benefit in the end from what's happening through the process, not from the images, but what's happening while the images are being created.
TiP: You can download the APP newspapers online, correct?
Gembara: Yes, you can. It's not the same, obviously, as the physical object. And we're doing whatever we can to distribute these newspapers in Poland. We've already, I think, published over 30,000 copies of different issues. And we're doing the distribution in two ways. One is through our photographers. So whenever they go to Warsaw, to their cities and towns, they take the copies along, and they either distribute during the protest that this particular newspaper is devoted to, or they leave it in different cultural centers, or places where people can just come and pick it up. And we've also paired with this bookshop in Warsaw, where everybody within Europe can order for free, and the bookshop sends it and only charges for the delivery. So that's one way also to send it around. Now, we also are trying to send some copies to the United States, and we're lucky to have support from friends who are trying to help us bring these newspapers and have them delivered to different places in New York, especially, because this is where they’re going to arrive.
TiP: Are these papers just in Polish?
Gembara: No, no. Actually, the last one, the Ukrainian one is in Polish, Ukrainian, and English, the one about the Belarusian, the support of the Belarusian protest, is in Belarusian and Polish, and English, I think, as well. I've got to check that. The one devoted to the Polish/Belarusian border crisis was also in English. And then we made a reprint in Berlin as we thought, there was this moment, there was this momentum, where the activists in Germany were very much supporting the idea of opening this corridor for the refugees stuck in the forests to arrive in Berlin. And this demand of taking them in was very strong. So we made a small reprint in German and English. So most of them are in at least two languages.
TiP: Were you one of the people who started the newspaper?
Gembara: Yes. We were in the middle of the women's strike, that was the end of 2020, and we felt this is a really important moment. And it's very dynamic. The protests were massive and the photographers were gathering a lot of material. And of course, we were also really, really frustrated. We thought we should do something more, apart from creating this online content that is there to contemplate and to disseminate. But at the same time, maybe it's a paradox, when you create this digital thing that you want at the same time to do something material. But I felt, at least my understanding of what newspapers could be, is that they would add to the performativity of the protest, because we've already observed how people very much understand what performance within the protest is, and how they perform to the camera, and how they come up with many different ways of being visible or being loud, and often of being photographed and noticed and documented. We thought that the newspaper that can be open and has all these slogans could actually be an object that you also use with your body. And the protest is very much about this choreography, so we thought we would maybe add something to the protest with the newspaper. That maybe sounds like a very ambitious idea, but it actually did happen. When we distributed the first batch of newspapers, standing on the street during a protest and giving away the copies, people would open them while the protest was happening, and seeing the slogans that they were using any way, they would raise them up. And that was immediately, obviously, documented by us. And then with time, people started recognizing the newspaper. They we're not afraid of it, because during a protest, there's a lot of material that people bring on leaflets and hand out. In the beginning, people were suspicious. What is it that we are giving them? Especially because it reminded them of this very popular daily newspaper. So, it felt like we were distributing news.
Gembara: No, no. Actually, the last one, the Ukrainian one is in Polish, Ukrainian, and English, the one about the Belarusian, the support of the Belarusian protest, is in Belarusian and Polish, and English, I think, as well. I've got to check that. The one devoted to the Polish/Belarusian border crisis was also in English. And then we made a reprint in Berlin as we thought, there was this moment, there was this momentum, where the activists in Germany were very much supporting the idea of opening this corridor for the refugees stuck in the forests to arrive in Berlin. And this demand of taking them in was very strong. So we made a small reprint in German and English. So most of them are in at least two languages.
TiP: Were you one of the people who started the newspaper?
Gembara: Yes. We were in the middle of the women's strike, that was the end of 2020, and we felt this is a really important moment. And it's very dynamic. The protests were massive and the photographers were gathering a lot of material. And of course, we were also really, really frustrated. We thought we should do something more, apart from creating this online content that is there to contemplate and to disseminate. But at the same time, maybe it's a paradox, when you create this digital thing that you want at the same time to do something material. But I felt, at least my understanding of what newspapers could be, is that they would add to the performativity of the protest, because we've already observed how people very much understand what performance within the protest is, and how they perform to the camera, and how they come up with many different ways of being visible or being loud, and often of being photographed and noticed and documented. We thought that the newspaper that can be open and has all these slogans could actually be an object that you also use with your body. And the protest is very much about this choreography, so we thought we would maybe add something to the protest with the newspaper. That maybe sounds like a very ambitious idea, but it actually did happen. When we distributed the first batch of newspapers, standing on the street during a protest and giving away the copies, people would open them while the protest was happening, and seeing the slogans that they were using any way, they would raise them up. And that was immediately, obviously, documented by us. And then with time, people started recognizing the newspaper. They we're not afraid of it, because during a protest, there's a lot of material that people bring on leaflets and hand out. In the beginning, people were suspicious. What is it that we are giving them? Especially because it reminded them of this very popular daily newspaper. So, it felt like we were distributing news.
Archive of Public Protest strike newspaper, slogans
TiP: The United States is heading in the direction of Poland in terms of taking away women's rights and limiting women. What's happened in the years since this women's strike? What's happening now?
Gembara: Obviously the momentum is behind us. There were a couple of very tragic cases of deaths of women who were refused abortion. That happened last year. And on that occasion, people went to the streets again. But I feel like that biggest momentum is somewhere behind us now. In terms of activism in the organizations, there's a lot of work that is being done. There are still attempts to present the citizens proposal of the bill to the parliament. There are signatures being collected and so on. It's a very difficult task to try to do anything within the parliament if it's taken by one political force. But there's been many initiatives around the women's strike. One wonderful thing is that there are branches of the women's strike that were created in small towns. And I think this is a great consequence. So the seed of this activism is there, and not only through the women's strike, but also through the black protest that started in 2016. In a very short time we had to catch up with this activism/civil society. We were forced over a couple of years to activate ourselves. People started being aware of all these things that they basically ignored for many, many years, or they thought did not concern them. In the beginning, the average age of the protesters was 40 plus or something. And then it went down after a couple of years, and we really saw how the new generation, or even teenagers, started coming to these protests. This is something that is happening in the long term, and I don't see any prospective at the moment for a big change.
What we are observing in the United States, it’s really scary. And it's so ironic that last year I worked with two American photographers and activists to create a set of postcards that were called Postcards from Forever. And they had pictures of the present and the historical pro-choice movements in the United States and in Poland. We wanted to distribute them in both countries. Fast forward a couple of months later, we're seeing this awful situation now in the United States, when basically it might end up just like in Poland. And it's just scary. Although the situation is so bleak on so many levels, I still feel that there's something good that happened to us as a society, and there are still really tragic phenomena. I'm not only talking about the government and their decisions, but the huge disparity between the treatment towards the refugees from Ukraine and the refugees from the Middle East and other parts of the world. This openness to take in the first group does not really exist when it comes to refugees coming through the Belarusian border or through other ways. So, this is still something that worries me and many people. At the same time, I feel during those seven years, a big part of this society grew up in terms of awareness and showing how they feel about it. Speaking up, shouting, putting the logos on themselves of different symbols of different causes. That has changed and that's very visible right now. During different protests, you could see how people start showing what they believe in through hanging flags and symbols in their windows and balconies and so on. Which could sound like a very banal activity, but at the same time, that's something that had not been visible before.
TiP: With everything that's happening now in the Ukraine, this intense refugee crisis, the proliferation of so many images, do you feel a sense that people are experiencing trauma fatigue? How does one sustain momentum? Do people become numb to this reality? Is there a fatigue that sets in?
Gembara: Sure there is. It shows. For a very long time, the mainstream media had all the top headlines about the war. And now there are suddenly other topics. I think that happened probably sometime after the Russian troops withdrew from places around Kyiv, sometime after the discovery of the massacres in Bucha. And when the Russians were preparing for the new campaign in the east, it almost felt like something is over. It's been horrible, but something is over. It is another stage. It's moving away, although there are bombs falling in places just 20 kilometers from the Polish border just a few days ago in Lviv. But there is fatigue for sure. And the media in Poland are reflecting that. The other day, I went to The Guardian's website, and I was surprised how it's still very much about Ukraine, whereas in Poland, that's being perceived and seen as a country that is very much interested, it's much less. It’s a very naive thing, but I always try to listen to those who either now live in Ukraine, or who escaped, or who are from there, but are living in Poland. And all of these people say and ask, please share. Please talk about it. And of course, even for our own mental health, I've wondered many times, should I keep doing that? Personally, I feel if people in Ukraine are going through this right now, the least I can do is to show that.
TiP: What keeps you going? What motivates you every day? What drives you forward?
Gembara: At the moment, and it might sound very banal, is that there are many other people who have it much worse than me. They're going through a lot of stuff. And I feel like I am obliged to speak about this and to do something. To not only document, but also actively think of ways to help. And I very much want my work to be helpful. At the same time, I don't want to give up on being an artist. So, I do care about the aesthetics. And I'm not a social worker, so I'm trying to find a balance here. But there are all these horrible things that are happening, that I feel I just can't rest as long as it's happening.
Gembara: Obviously the momentum is behind us. There were a couple of very tragic cases of deaths of women who were refused abortion. That happened last year. And on that occasion, people went to the streets again. But I feel like that biggest momentum is somewhere behind us now. In terms of activism in the organizations, there's a lot of work that is being done. There are still attempts to present the citizens proposal of the bill to the parliament. There are signatures being collected and so on. It's a very difficult task to try to do anything within the parliament if it's taken by one political force. But there's been many initiatives around the women's strike. One wonderful thing is that there are branches of the women's strike that were created in small towns. And I think this is a great consequence. So the seed of this activism is there, and not only through the women's strike, but also through the black protest that started in 2016. In a very short time we had to catch up with this activism/civil society. We were forced over a couple of years to activate ourselves. People started being aware of all these things that they basically ignored for many, many years, or they thought did not concern them. In the beginning, the average age of the protesters was 40 plus or something. And then it went down after a couple of years, and we really saw how the new generation, or even teenagers, started coming to these protests. This is something that is happening in the long term, and I don't see any prospective at the moment for a big change.
What we are observing in the United States, it’s really scary. And it's so ironic that last year I worked with two American photographers and activists to create a set of postcards that were called Postcards from Forever. And they had pictures of the present and the historical pro-choice movements in the United States and in Poland. We wanted to distribute them in both countries. Fast forward a couple of months later, we're seeing this awful situation now in the United States, when basically it might end up just like in Poland. And it's just scary. Although the situation is so bleak on so many levels, I still feel that there's something good that happened to us as a society, and there are still really tragic phenomena. I'm not only talking about the government and their decisions, but the huge disparity between the treatment towards the refugees from Ukraine and the refugees from the Middle East and other parts of the world. This openness to take in the first group does not really exist when it comes to refugees coming through the Belarusian border or through other ways. So, this is still something that worries me and many people. At the same time, I feel during those seven years, a big part of this society grew up in terms of awareness and showing how they feel about it. Speaking up, shouting, putting the logos on themselves of different symbols of different causes. That has changed and that's very visible right now. During different protests, you could see how people start showing what they believe in through hanging flags and symbols in their windows and balconies and so on. Which could sound like a very banal activity, but at the same time, that's something that had not been visible before.
TiP: With everything that's happening now in the Ukraine, this intense refugee crisis, the proliferation of so many images, do you feel a sense that people are experiencing trauma fatigue? How does one sustain momentum? Do people become numb to this reality? Is there a fatigue that sets in?
Gembara: Sure there is. It shows. For a very long time, the mainstream media had all the top headlines about the war. And now there are suddenly other topics. I think that happened probably sometime after the Russian troops withdrew from places around Kyiv, sometime after the discovery of the massacres in Bucha. And when the Russians were preparing for the new campaign in the east, it almost felt like something is over. It's been horrible, but something is over. It is another stage. It's moving away, although there are bombs falling in places just 20 kilometers from the Polish border just a few days ago in Lviv. But there is fatigue for sure. And the media in Poland are reflecting that. The other day, I went to The Guardian's website, and I was surprised how it's still very much about Ukraine, whereas in Poland, that's being perceived and seen as a country that is very much interested, it's much less. It’s a very naive thing, but I always try to listen to those who either now live in Ukraine, or who escaped, or who are from there, but are living in Poland. And all of these people say and ask, please share. Please talk about it. And of course, even for our own mental health, I've wondered many times, should I keep doing that? Personally, I feel if people in Ukraine are going through this right now, the least I can do is to show that.
TiP: What keeps you going? What motivates you every day? What drives you forward?
Gembara: At the moment, and it might sound very banal, is that there are many other people who have it much worse than me. They're going through a lot of stuff. And I feel like I am obliged to speak about this and to do something. To not only document, but also actively think of ways to help. And I very much want my work to be helpful. At the same time, I don't want to give up on being an artist. So, I do care about the aesthetics. And I'm not a social worker, so I'm trying to find a balance here. But there are all these horrible things that are happening, that I feel I just can't rest as long as it's happening.
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