Poland

Krzysztof Pacholak

acholak.ne

Biography

Krzysztof Pacholak (b. 1986) lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.

He graduated from the University of Warsaw after studying sociology, then went on to study photography at the Institute of Creative Photography - Opava, Czech Republic. His work is interested in the city, sociology, new media and politics, which is evident in his best known projects, Don't Live Alone, Unfinished Country, Pretty Sweet, and School.

He also works at The Association of the Creative Initiatives as a culture manager, curator of young artists and art-coach.

Contemporary urban landscape is changing all the time. Highways and ring roads are the latest and most visible phenomenons. They are now the greatest change in the appearance of Warsaw. After many years, finally, the Polish capital city got connected to the network of European highways.

New hubs were built. Viaducts, ramps, overpasses, exits and entrances. Warsaw people must now learn again how to navigate and move across the city. They are getting used to the fact that it takes four and a half hours to reach Gdańsk and five to reach Berlin.

These "non-places" are extremely attractive for a photographer. Raw, concrete and monumental structures were built under constuction rules known all over the world. The sterile, anonymous structures are unfriendly to someone who does not have a car. They brutally change everything around.

They fascinate.

It was a real travel in time. The school in Chociwel (small village in North-West Poland) looks like a typical Polish school. All my memories suddenly came back. It turned out that this place smells just like my own elementary school. The globes are the same. Same arrays. Torn and dusty maps. Toilets that I was always afraid to enter. Dark and dank changing rooms. Everything was the same as it was in my own school.

This is not a coherent narrative. These are my own memories. Imagine you meet with your classmate and begin to remind yourselves of that teacher you were most afraid of or go back to places, where you smoked cigarettes during the break. It's something like that. Imagine that I take you on a walk in the school. I open the first door and show you a geography classroom. We enter, go to the backroom and we see the rock samples, minerals and political maps of the Soviet Union, that collapsed 20 years ago. You know what I mean?

Krzysztof Pacholak

In the community center you can play table soccer or ping pong. In the evenings, adults come and barbecue. Sausages with mustard are a real goody.

By day you play football, volleyball or swim in the lake. The neighbours just bought a new quad bike, so they allow us to take a short ride sometimes.

There's a hunt club in the nearby village. Whiskered men come from all over the world. They go hunting early in the mornings, in the evenings they drink beer, or something stronger.

It's cool, because there's no school and you don't need to get up early.

Matt's father is a beekeeper. He lets us try the fresh honey just from the beehive.

Mosquitoes bite. It's hot. There's gonna be a storm in the evening. Tomorrow we're going to ride a bike.

Pacholak visited North - West Poland with Rafal Milach and Kuba Dabrowski to run photo-workshops for children getting bored during their holidays. Travelling from one village to the next by camper, they took lots of photos, documenting the process.