Wiktor Pental, "The Perfect City", ok. 1960, photo by courtesy of Asymetria Gallery
The photographer's work in socialist Poland of the 1950s is a part of exhibitions and publications around Europe, after decades spent out of the public sphere.
The worker city of Nowa Huta was a socialist experiment on the eastern outskirts of the Kraków, a showpiece of Marxist social planning. Built in the early 1950s, the new city quickly attracted thousands of families to the area.
Most of Nowa Huta remains occupied, though the steel industry it was built beside has changed. The imposing buildings and street plan stand as a memorial to those times and the ideology of progress in the communist era. It can be hard to imagine such a conception for people living, children playing and other elements unfolding in the city's day-to-day workings of the city. But Wiktor Pental's documentary photography is a testament to Nowa Huta's concept, which polarised the nation when it was developed.
“His photographs speak of ordinary lives”, reads a brochure accompanying an exhibition of Pental's work, “which the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland were not always so keen on. This is why the pictures were kept in a drawer for more than half a century. Although they were taken in one location, they convey the atmosphere of the whole of Poland behind the Iron Curtain.”
Pental's life held much more than being a resident of the sprawling new city. He was born in 1920 in Woroniszka, and his early experiences with photography were using cameras borrowed from school friends. He took pictures of school events, scout outings and military training. His hobby would help support his family during and after the Second World War. On his return from training, he attended a Russian high school, which he completed shortly before the war began.
During the Soviet and German occupations of Poland, Pental worked in the town of Żołudek as a translator and driver, from August 1941 until June 1944. At the same time, he enlisted with the underground Home Army and led intelligence operations. Pental used his camera in underground activities conducted by the Home Army around Novgorod Oblast. He was disarmed by the Soviets in Vilnius, then escaped from a camp in Miedniki. A few weeks later, he joined the Polish Army. After a short training course, he was promoted to second lieutenant and was assigned to 13th Infantry Regiment, which was sent to the front lines. Shortage of film stock on the battleground prevented him from capturing the horrors of war.
Pental left the army in May 1950, and moved to Nowa Huta in Kraków in January 1951. He worked successively in the Union City Building, the National Defence League and the Mechanical School, and resumed his passion for photography. After obtaining the status of correspondent with the Central Photographic Agency, it became easier to photograph in Nowa Huta, which was still under construction (the city's design was considered a classified “state secret”).
Pental was active in the Polish Photographic Society, and took part in the first exhibitions, winning awards and diplomas. He met Polish Film Chronicle photojournalist Henryk Makarewicz, with whom he took many portraits of labour leaders. These images were dispalyed around the city for propaganda purposes. He attended an advanced-photography course in January 1957 and met Witold Michalik, who was just starting his career as a photographer, and later became a well-known artist in Poland and abroad.
The Imago Mundi Foundation has been engaged since 2005 in the promotion of Pental's photography, along with others. The exhibition 802% Above the Norm, held in 2007, showed photography by Pental and Henryk Makarewicz of workers at the turn of the 1940s and '50s in Poland, particularly in the Nowa Huta district. Pental, then 87, visited the exhibition in Kraków several times a week, interacting with audiences.
Similar exhibitions were held in the Netherlands, Iceland, the United Kingdom and, in 2011, in Paris. One image caught the eye of the director David Lynch in 2012, who included Pental's picture in a book. The Paris Photo exhibition featured works by Pental in November 2012.
Wiktor Pental has lived in Kraków since July 2011, where he goes for regular walks in the Park Lotników Polskich. He turns 93 in 2013.
Roberto Galea, January 2013
The author thanks Bogumiła Michalska and Maciek Michalski for help with this article.