What is interesting and at the same time characteristic of the pro-consumption direction of Gierek's policy (which was more liberal than that executed in the 50s and 60s) is that a lot of attention is devoted to the factory's employees and their aspirations and social needs, including their high-brow recreational hobby – here they are, the directors of the FSM and their staff involved in equestrian culture, riding horses at the company's Hubertus club.
Visually, the whole aspires to the convention of contemporary “Western” car catalogues. The spreads are filled with eye-catching photographic mosaics and montages, typologies of car details, or two-page, impressive shots of factory halls and cars in outdoor settings. Some interesting effects appearing in the book include juxtaposing black and white photographs with colour ones, or the variety of page arrangements, considering the consistent narrative throughout the volume (one of whose concluding images shows comrade Gierek's visit to the FSM). These dynamic combinations metaphorically correspond with the lively rhythm of the factory, but also provide the whole with a more comic strip- and advertising-like air, just as ought to be the case with a capitalist license.
Rago and Siemaszko successfully employed the conventions of industrial photography, along with the genre's tendency to monumentalise and extract fragments of appliances, machines, or the repetitive, abstract details of the elements produced by them. At the same time, they combine that evocative, industrial visual newspeak with idealised, quasi-photojournalist snapshots of the factory and everyday life in the Polish People's Republic. Appearing amongst the details of the assembly lines are themes such as leisure time in the mountains, cross-country rallies, visits at a friends' allotment, medical care, nurseries, kindergartens, and canteens. It is no coincidence that the album does not so much advertise the final product – the car, as presents an idealised vision of the factory that produces it. After all, a manufacturing plant has a social and cultural significance, it is a metaphor for life in socialism, while assembling a car stands for assembling Edward Gierek's imagined world of “socialism with a human face” – in the spotlight.
photographs: Danuta Rago, Zbyszko Siemaszko
text: Wiesław Nowakowski
graphic design: Andrzej Krzysztoforski
publisher: Interpress, Warsaw
year of publication: 1979
volume: 152 pages
format: 33.5 x 23 cm
cover: paperback
print run: 30350