The style of the photographs is to act as a counterpoint to the impersonal statistics employed in the German camps. The striking namelessness of the victims, the numbers persistently appearing in historical reports, and never-ending arguments about the death count – these all have taken away individuality from the prisoners. The Irreversible cycle aims to reclaim these personalities – the individual faces and that which stands behind them.
The portraits are all taken from close quarters, with facial features of the protagonists illuminated – the photographer wants to remain near his subjects and the traumatic memories that haunt their features. The pitch-black background is intended as a space dedicated to those who didn’t make it through their wartime custody.
Agnieszka and Maciek Nabrdalik were able to extend the project to an international scale with a grant received from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. To date, they have travelled 80,000 kilometres and recorded almost 100 hours of conversation. This is not the end to The Irreversible – the team keeps searching for survivors with whom they could talk; it is possible to help them find new protagonists through the project website.
As a portrait series, The Irreversible has already been awarded third prize in the NPPA Best of the Photojournalism 2010, first prize in Polish Grand Press Photo contest the same year and third prize at Pictures of the Year International in 2013.
The book, to premiere on the 1st of September, has been designed by Ania Nałęcka of Tapir Book Design. Nałęcka often works with photographers and is a constant collaborator of the Sputnik Photos collective – she has designed, among others, their award-winning group publication Distant Place, and the acclaimed IS(not), as well as books by individual Sputnik members. Her designs, conceived in close cooperation with authors, are remarkable in form, never distracting one's attention from the core of the publication – the photographs and their subjects.
The Irreversible, as an object, carries out the thoughtful approach to the subject apparent throughout the project. The authors refrain from using any numbers in the book whatsoever, including page numbers, thus radically objecting to the oft-employed methodology in recounting the stories of the war. The book contains portraits of ex-prisoners of different nationalities and backgrounds, but there is no attempt to try and put this collection of portraits into all-encompassing descriptions. One won’t even find biographies, archival shots or any other attempts to present history in an objective, removed manner.
The Irreversible's cover has been made out of black sandpaper – its texture is unpleasant to touch, bringing up a rough, injurious sensation. The authors describe this idea:
This is not the book to tuck in among others, if only because of its damaging surface. Just the touch itself might discourage you from further contact. This is why we think that the subject as much as the album itself deserve a special place in the homes and minds of those who reach for it.
Agnieszka Nabrdalik graduated in Philosophy and Sociology from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. After moving to Warsaw, she began working as a journalist for daily and weekly publications, and has experience in writing reportage from Poland as well as other countries of the Eastern Bloc. She has co-directed a documentary on sex-reassignment therapy that was given an honorable mention at HotDocs in Toronto and was later shown at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. She began working as a freelance writer in 2012.
Maciek Nabrdalik is a graduate of Warsaw University of Technology. He has worked as a press photographer in the U.S., as well as for a major Polish daily, covering national and international news. He began working as a freelancer in 2007. Since 2011 he is a member of VII Photo. Although Nabrdalik often works in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, his main concentration is on sociological changes in Eastern Europe. He is now based in Warsaw and has been assigned to cover stories for Smithsonian, Newsweek (Poland), Polityka magazine and the Wall Street Journal. In 2012 he won Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Grant for the project Economic Migrations.
Sources: press materials, theirreversible.com, Editor: Anna Micińska, 19.08.2013