Mariusz Hermanowicz was a photographer who also made drawings and short films. He lived and worked in Poland and France. In 1977, he went on a crucial, life-shaping journey to London, where he first encountered literature unobtainable in communist Poland, including Witold Gombrowicz and Czesław Miłosz. Inspired by Polish writers, he started to caption his photographs. One of his most vital series, Someone I Don’t Know – which combined both journalistic and conceptual approaches – also originated from that period. He went on to explore similar themes in subsequent projects.
Hermanowicz’s works from the 1970s resemble a diary. He photographed situations in the streets, views out of windows, and Polish realities of the communist era. The pictures are accompanied by concrete, occasionally metaphorical or somewhat surrealist comments; his daily life portrayed in images and text. The titles of the series (View from my Window, My Courtyard, Apartment) encapsulate the unpretentious nature of the photographs.
The above photograph was not one of a series, but was taken while Hermanowicz was working on Apartment, in which he revealed the story of his family waiting to be given a state apartment in Warsaw’s Ursynów district. Exhibited along with the photographs was a letter to the housing cooperative from 1977, part of which concerned a child:
