This extraordinary book of photographs published by Warsaw Museum shows the process of the destruction of the monuments of the Old Town and New Town during the Warsaw Uprising – all taken by the amateur photographer Ewa Faryaszewska.
Ewa Faryaszewska was a 24-year-old student at the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw. Like most of her contemporaries, she took part in the Uprising. As a liaison officer of the Wigry scouting battalion, she was tasked with rescuing the works of art and monuments of the Old Town. Instead of a weapon, she held a camera; instead of ammunition – a roll of Agfacolor film. Only this roll survived the uprising, along with the images of the destroyed Old Town.
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Agfacolor slides from film shot in August 1944 by Ewa Faryaszewska in the Old Town in Warsaw, developed in 1955-1957, digitised in 2014, photo: Warsaw Museum collection
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Magdalena Wróblewska, the author of Ruins of Photographs: Photographs of Ruins – 1944-2014 (originally: Fotografie Ruin: Ruiny Fotografii – 1944-2014), writes:
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As an amateur photographer, she didn’t work according to a plan, but used her intuition. Her photographs can be considered documentary only in the colloquial sense, as a method of effective preservation of images under difficult circumstances.
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Ramparts reconstructed in the 1930s and the entrance to Nowomiejska Street with a barricade visible on the left. On the right, buildings typical for the Old Town, between Nowomiejska, Wąski Dunaj, Szeroki Dunaj and Podwale streets, photo: Ewa Faryaszewska, Agfacolor slide, 1944, Warsaw Museum collection
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Most attractive about Faryaszewska’s photos is the display of the gradual process of the city’s decay, as it is reduced to ruins. Colour film was rare during the uprising, and that’s why these photographs seem even more incredible. The buildings and streets of the Old and New Town are shown at the moment of their fall, in the immediate wake of explosions, when fire, smoke and dust are still visible. Faryaszewska sometimes returned to the same place many times in order to show this decay accurately. There are no fights shown in the photos and almost no people. We only see accidental frames taken quickly, often under- or overexposed.
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These photos show the destroyed Old Town at the end of August 1944. Ruined buildings, ruined streets, barricades, churches, war posters. We see Saint Casimir’s Church on the New Town Market, the tower of the Franciscan Church, a destroyed town house at Freta Street. These pictures were not taken by a professional reporter, but they are priceless for historians. They show these places as a person fighting in the Uprising would have actually seen them,
says the publisher Małgorzata Mycielska in an interview for the Gazeta Polish-language newspaper in Canada.
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Centrefold of the book ‘Ruins in Photographs: Photographs in Ruins – 1944-2014’ by Magdalena Wróblewska, photo: Grażyna Kułakowska / Warsaw Museum
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The author of Ruins in Photographs: Photographs in Ruins – 1944-2014 is not only interested in these photographs, which were given to the Warsaw Museum by Faryaszewska’s mother. Slides, black-and-white prints and colourful scans are seen by Magdalena Wróblewska as testimonies referencing other events than just the Warsaw Uprising, surpassing the story of wartime destruction.
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Centrefold of the book ‘Ruins in Photographs: Photographs in Ruins – 1944-2014’ by Magdalena Wróblewska, photo: Grażyna Kułakowska / Warsaw Museum.
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Another important train of thought is the question of the monument protection system active during World War II. Photography, as well as drawing, played an important part in the activities leading towards the documentation of cultural possessions, initiated by Stanisław Lorentz, the director of National Museum in Warsaw. Apart from that, the most precious showpieces from churches, tenement houses and public buildings were taken by the underground while it still seemed to be the safest place. During one of those excursions – through ruins, fire and dead bodies – Ewa Faryaszewska was killed.
Originally written in Polish by Agnieszka Sural, Mar 2015; translated by N. Mętrak-Ruda, Nov 2015
