Warszawa 1945 is a universe of visual forms and motifs representing the matter of war ruins: ubiquitous rubble, destroyed weapons, charred bodies, burnt walls, smashed sculptures. Sempoliński shows the stripped debris of the city, here and there still covered with snow. This is a crumbled city whose devastated fabric makes it impossible to even discern individual forms in the dramatic black and white photographs. Charred human corpses lie next to misleadingly similar fragments of burnt engines or car wrecks, furniture parts, and garbage, while all of this, along with the endless rubble, blends with the grey ground. Sempoliński was not just a witness to the Uprising's battles and street executions, but also participated in the makeshift burials, and he kept discovering tens or thousands of corpses still occupying the basements and courtyards whilst taking pictures. He therefore also did not refrain from drastic close-ups and details in his book, he was rediscovering the city step by step, at the moment of its complete decline. He tends to emphasise the terror of the ruins by exposing the texture of the cloudy sky. This visual effect is intensified by big enlargements which in print gained even more contrast and grain, thus foregrounding this specific effect of the amalgam of the ruins, a poignant blend of organic and non-organic remnants.
Sempoliński's Warsaw is almost deprived of people. It is a dead city. The few living people resemble ghosts, which, just like the photographer, traverse the expanse of ruins in silence. This is more than just a document, it is a suggestive creation of an image of a ruined city that had a powerful impact on the collective memory and was cultivated by the propaganda of the Polish People's Republic. Sempoliński explores only the selected, most destroyed areas, most of all the Old Town, which he'd been especially fond of since his childhood. He is not interested in the life that Warsaw was regaining, but in recording its devastation. With the use of his camera, he performs a symbolic exhumation of his hometown.
This series, besides being the most important of Leonard Sempoliński's output, also generated a brand new sub-genre of architecture and landscape photography – the photography of ruins. Sempoliński is not interested in formulating metaphors, or the poetry of ruins, but in a very specific, topographic and documental work. The photographer carefully notes down not just locations, but also the exact dates of pictures. Photo captions prepared by Borecka include information about the tragic events and their victims. The book also contains fragments of memories of people who returned to the destroyed city in 1945. The author donated part of the photographs to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes. In a broader perspective, they served, and still serve, to constantly restore and preserve the memory of the scale of the destruction and crimes.
photographs: Leonard Sempoliński
text: Emilia Borecka, Leonard Sempoliński
graphic design: Stefan Nargiełło
publisher: National Scientific Publishers, Warsaw
year of publication: 1975
volume: 332 pages
format: 26.5 x 28 cm
cover: linen hardcover with dust jacket
print run: 20 280