Black Sea of Concrete
Milach began his photographic career in 2002 with the Szary (The Grey) series, which was devoted to landscapes of Silesian cities and their inhabitants. Numerous works have focused on the visible traces of transformation in this region, but Milach's vision oscillated between personal involvement and a subjective, distanced observation. This factor made The Grey series different and recognisable.
Milach also analysed the influence of politics and economy on a place and people's behaviour in a completely different work entitled Wunderland. The series of photos from 2006 depicted the Excalibur City shopping centre located on the Austrian-Czech border. It has been operating since 1993 and is one of the largest remaining duty-free zones in the region. Other similar stores were closed down as a result of legal changes from 2004. Excalibur City survived because of its location in the Czech Republic and the consequent low prices of both alcohol and cigarettes. In Wunderland, Rafał Milach brings out its unique aura, which, apart from the political and geographical context, is also characterised by its unusual architecture, reminiscent of a cheap replica set of Las Vegas. Milach's photographs border on poetically surreal, sometimes containing elements of the grotesque, perfectly capturing the spirit of Excalibur City and its visitors.
In turn, Czarne Morze Betonu(Black Sea of Concrete, 2009) is a series of photographs from Ukraine that takes up the subject of historical change and the destruction related to it in a light, melancholic manner. The author described the project in the following way:
The very first thing that catches your eye is concrete. Kilometres of grey apartment blocks sometimes painted in Ukraine's national colours: yellow and blue. You feel the Soviet past immediately. It looks surreal. It does not fit in with the beautiful landscape that surrounds this place. Industrial zones and scrap yards do not resemble the harmony between man and nature. The local landscape was brutally changed by man. For me, the Black Sea has become an illustration of contemporary Ukraine. Five years have passed since the Orange Revolution and the country is plunging into ever-greater chaos, deepened by an economic crisis. A young democracy that has liberated itself from Russian influence is still unable to free itself from its Soviet past.
This series, which indirectly comments on the current political situation in Ukraine, has received numerous awards, including in the Pictures of the Year International (2009) and Grand Press Photo (2009) competitions. Together with Ania Nałęcka, Milach also received the Grand Prix for the design of the Black Sea of Concrete book in the American competition Photography Book Now in 2009.
7 Rooms
Milach strives to capture the realities of everyday life in Russia and other former Soviet republics as authentically as possible. His first-person narration style is straightforward, without significant interference into the subject or setting. His best-known project is the 7 Rooms series, which paints a collective portrait of thirty-somethings in Putin’s Russia. He spent several years on the project, establishing contact with several young people across Russia then slowly getting closer to them, entering their lives and their homes and ultimately capturing that experience with his camera. For Milach, his subjects are both his heroes and his friends.
There is no sensationalism in images of people such as Stas, a journalist and a ‘real Siberian bear’ from Krasnoyarsk or Vasya, a drag queen living outside Yekaterinburg. In addition to six very personal narratives of 7 Rooms, there is a seventh chapter dedicated to the reportage of Svetlana Alexievich, whose book War’s Unwomanly Face reveals stories of women who fought in Ukraine in the Second World War. Other fragments are from Alexievich’s book Enchanted with Death, which tells stories of people and their experiences after the Soviet Union fell. The project’s seven chapters refer to ‘the metaphorical baggage of the generation born in the USSR’, showing spaces that are both dismal and pleasant, reaching beyond stereotypes of poverty and kitsch to show a nation torn between traditions of the past and consumerism in the present.
On completing the project, Milach said: ‘In Russia, there are a huge number of paradoxes. Sometimes it seemed to me that I understood some of them, only to find that my next trip proved that I was mistaken’. He has also said that ‘The more I tried to understand Russia, the more lost I became. Russia is like a planet of its own.’
In an interview with modernphoto.eu, Milach explained:
It is hard to tell where I got that passion for the former Soviet Union from. Something draws me to it. Maybe this is because I have got some family near Baikal, in Kaliningrad and in Belarus. My grandparents come from the borderland. I am really fond of the mentality of the people there. They are frank, spontaneous and straightforward. It feels like home whenever I’m there. Even back in New York I felt best in Coney Island among Ukrainian and Russian Jews. I could talk to them in Russian. This is just something that is rooted in the back of my head.
