In Głos ulicy, snapshots form photo cycles which quite aptly tell the story of struggles and individual street confrontations, and the general atmosphere of martial law, constructing its legend as a time of society engaging in battle (supported by the Catholic Church) against the authorities – invisible, and yet embodied by the militia officers and ZOMO. The distorted figures and blurry faces (in the famous photograph taken in Lublin, everyone's eyes are covered by a black strip) were a deliberate means of protecting the participants of the resistance protests, as was the exclusion, contrary to later publications, of the portraits of opposition leaders. Głos ulicy has a collective protagonist – society resisting the unwanted authorities.
The individual sequences are almost filmic in their nature (a crowd in front of a church and an empty square in front of the same church after tear gas has been fired). Recurring themes from the iconography of martial law appear: demonstrating crowds, a militia van, the Solidarność symbol, crosses formed out of flowers, anti-system banners, and raised hands showing the victory sign.
Considering this thematic consistency and the underground aesthetics of individual frames and spreads from today's perspective, Głos ulicy comes across as an emotionally-charged, almost poetic documentary. Even though the details are indiscernible, the message of these photographs is clear – here is an immediate documentation of the authorities' violence and society's resistance. These overexposed photographs convey significant elements of the tear gas-infused atmosphere of those times. This is martial law amplified, an affective photobook which contributes to the feeling of social solidarity (the titular voice of the street is the voice of the citizens).
At the same time, however, we are dealing with a consciously prepared historical document – the detailed list of photographs describes the place and time of their creation. It is an anthology of pictures collected for its contemporary as well as future generations, as an evidence, a testimony to the truth.
Equally significant are the journalistic features of the book and the counter-propagandistic character of the photographs. Głos ulicy is a collection of images excluded from the official state-controlled media, a selection of underground photo reportage shots from the period of martial law (the photographs were taken not only from the authors' archive, but also from other underground publications). The respective spreads are deliberately organized in a newspaper-like style and comprise up to three photographs, forming a journalistic narrative. At the same time, everything is characteristically compressed, in order to be able to fit into the handy, pocket-sized format of an underground publication: one that is easy to carry and smuggle, and that is at first sight completely unrecognisable. It is no coincidence that the cover of Głos ulicy is plain (for the sake of custom and disguise, readers used to wrap the clandestine publications in newspapers). The cover of the copy we looked at is made out of simple cardboard sheets covered in linen, and bound with a well-designed, manually bent metal wire bracket going through holes punched out of the pages.
photographs: various authors
text: Magdalena Koziarska and Grzegorz Koziarski
graphic design: —-
publisher: Głos Publishing House, Warsaw
year of publication: 1982
volume: 6 pages + 55 photographic plates
format: 18.5 x 13.5 cm
cover: hardcover, ring-bound
print run: unknown
Our heartfelt thanks to the
Atticus antique bookstore for their help in obtaining the publication
Original text: polishphotobook.tumblr.com, transl. Ania Micińska, July 2015