The process of "re-cycling" the matzevot from Jewish cementeries had already begun during the war. "Jews were forced by Germans to use matzevot as building material. The road to the labor camp in Płaszów was paved with them," explains Baksik in an interview with Agnieszka Kowalska. At first matzevot were used by the German soldiers in Polish houses in which they stationed. Poles started using matzevot probably already during the war, however the process didn't cease with its end. The matzevot were similarly recycled many years after the war.
But Baksik doesn't ask who did it, and that's where the detective analogy ends. He's not interested in finding guilty nor stigmatising the perpetrators. "It is easy to turn people into heroes, and equally simple to make them into terrible bastards", he says. He points to the fact that all questions like "who did it first?" or "inspired by whom"? often serve to relieve guilt and responsibility. Rather than asking those questions, he thinks of his project as a way of bringing about the debate which would change the situation and help to return the matzevot to where they belong.
Everyday Use
"What can you make out of a matzeva?" asks cultural anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir in an article accompanying the book. And her answer is "everything that requires stone": matzevot as pavement slabs and curbstones, grind stones, building material of walls and foundations of houses and cowsheds, steps in stairs, matzevot in roads, and in children's sandbox, lastly matzevot turned into Christian tombstones. Not to mention matzevot as museum exhibits - all these usages have been recorded in Łukasz Baksik's book. And they all seem to be pointing to the fact that these tombstones should be where they belong - in the cementery.
All objects in the book are photographed according to a certain pattern: first - a long shot where you can see the object and its environment, landscape or immediate context (this first picture looks often very innocent). Then a second shot which lets you see what there really is. Only in the last picture, a close-up, can one discern the letters of the Hebrew inscription. No commentary, only the info about the location. No people.
What a Matzeva Can Do to Us
A seperate section of the book make the photographs of matzevot turned into grindstones - some of them lying on the ground, some still serving their new function. Their images are accompanied by a transcription of inscriptions and translation. These shreds of words and phrases help to realize the tragic aspect of the whole process.
Referring to Baksik's project and comparing it to Wojciech Wilczyk's project "There's No Such Thing As an Innocent Eye Joanna Tokarska-Bakir makes the point that "their wisdom comes in not beginning by asking what we can do with a matzeva. They ask what a matzeva can do to us".
The photographs from the book Matzevot for Everyday Use were taken between 2008-2012. Some of them were exhibited as part of the exhibitions in CSW in Warsaw (2010), Muzeum Etnograficzne in Kraków (2011), and National History Museum in Minsk, Belarus (2012).
Author: Mikołaj Gliński, March 2012.
Łukasz Baksik
The Matzevot for Everyday Use
Czarne and Foundation Uptown
Texts by: Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Ewa Toniak, Jan Tomasz Gross
Interview with the photographer: Agnieszka Kowalska
Bilingual edition: Polish and English
ISBN: 978-83-7536-580-1
Premiere: March 5, 2013