Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Page 76

74 AT L A N T I CA
ICELANDa
if you see no people, they are there, somewhere.
For several years in the 1990s, together with a
friend, I had a commercial photography studio in
Warsaw. That was a difficult thing for someone
who had been a photojournalist all his life. If we
photographed people, I was happy enough, but
when it came to photographing a box, or a tea-
cup, I was in trouble. Once, during an interview,
I rather stupidly said that a person can at least
smile, whereas a teacup cannot. Not a very intel-
ligent thing to say, I admit, but – somewhere along
the line – it’s true. No matter how much I try, I
just cannot have a meaningful relationship with
a teacup.
HB: Color photographs from Eastern Europe
in 1960-80 sometimes have these special colors,
but yours don’t. When photographic technol-
ogy advanced greatly in Western Europe in the
eighties, this yellow luster was strongly associated
with Eastern Europe. Was the reason the film, the
processing, the printing technique or was it just a
fashionable thing?
CN: It would be good to be able to say that
was the fashion in those days, but no, it certainly
wasn’t fashion. It was simply ORWO color film,
East Germany’s answer to Agfa, Kodak, and the
like. It was bad, very bad, and if I had used it then,
this exhibition would not be hanging here now. I
shot everything on Kodak slide film, and after a
few decades my slides are still keeping very well,
thank you.
Never properly processed, always badly print-
ed, it had a remarkable magenta or yellow-green
cast that, over time, matured into something
approaching Picasso’s color periods. Magazines
and books were also printed very badly in those
days, so the end result was that over all of Eastern
Europe color photography came to be associated
with these rather unsettling colors. But to some,
they were an “art form”.
HB: Do you ever take black and white photo-
graphs?
CN: Yes, black and white film has run through
my cameras, but I am, I think, a color photogra-
pher. If something like that exists. In the 70s I shot
a lot of black and white material, as that seemed
fairly natural in those days and besides, it was all I
could afford then.
In the last ten years or so I have done only two
subjects in black and white, both for exhibitions,
and I enjoyed the freedom of not having to worry
about the color, color balance and so on. And a
good black and white print is a joy to see, though
difficult to make. And that’s the point, I guess,
regarding the future of black and white photog-
raphy: because we can make the prints ourselves,
using photographic paper and chemicals, we will
consider this to be more the “art” side of photog-
raphy.
HB: Humor seems to play a big role in your
work, sometimes very subtle and sometimes more
obvious. Is humor an important factor in you pic-
tures and in your life?
CN: Yes, by all means! If I can inject even a
tiny amount of humor into a photograph, then I
am a happy man. Making people smile makes me
smile, so I think that’s a win-win situation. Besides,
things one saw in communist Eastern Europe, and
in this case Poland, were sometimes so grotesque
that they tended to be almost funny. What could I
do but photograph these tragi-comic things?
HB: Is there something that is gone or you miss
from the period depicted in your pictures?
CN: Yes, very much so! My youth! I have, of
course, no nostalgia for The System – the com-
munist system – but please remember that I was
20 to 30 years younger then, and that in itself
brings back memories. Whatever the problems,
when you are young you react to them differ-
ently. Important too, in my case, is that in spite
of everything, I fell in love with the Poland of the
1960s and 70s. Or rather, I fell in love with the
people of that time, so different from the people
of England where I was born. Every single day the
people of Poland had to fight, not physically of
course, but with words, actions, ideas, even jokes,
to surmount the obstacles the communist authori-
ties threw at them. People who have to fight are
interesting people. And if there is one thing the
Poles are good at, that’s fighting. Against repres-
sion. Against stupidity. Against all odds.
Chris Niedenthal’s exhibition is on display until
November 19 at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography.
Hours are 12 – 19 weekdays and 13 – 17 weekends.
Grófarhús, Tryggvagata 15, 6th Floor, tel. 563-1790.
Free admission. ljosmyndasafnreykjavikur.is a
“Gdansk, the Lenin Shipyard.
Striking workers in 1988, eight
years after the original, ground-
breaking strike. This time the
euphoric atmosphere was
replaced by one of despair — but
this strike did, in the end, lead
to the 1989 Roundtable Talks
between he communist govern-
ment and the ‘Solidarity’ opposi-
tion.” Chris Niedenthal
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