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Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, this has little to do with what Poland looked like in the 80s.

Being born and having lived there for the first few years of my life, these pictures looks as exotic and strange to me as pictures from Yemen or Kazakhstan.

I'm not saying they're not real, but these pictures are clearly selected to be as far from what an average Western person considers to be "normal".

I guess it's like going to the US, only focusing on the Amish and extrapolating their way of life to the whole country.

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In that photo with the wicker-basket love seats on the beach — which I'm guessing is Sopot — we still have those. Also ul Mariacka looks no different.

I'm guessing you're from somewhere prosperous? I mean even today, yes Sopot and Warsaw are just masses of Porsches and pretty women, but that isn't the case in some less well-off areas.

> In that photo with the wicker-basket love seats on the beach — which I'm guessing is Sopot — we still have those.

Amish also still exist. The issue is, this portrays a country that was by then very diverse, through a very specific perspective, that, through a rather suspicious coincidence, happens to match western stereotypes about the country, instead of challenging it.

Doesn't change the fact those are good photos, but while there might be true in their literal content, as a whole they provide a false narrative.

Not sure what are you trying to prove. Those photos show what's quaint. Big cities and places where things look more western seem less unique or interesting.

The choice of photos serves a function, build a certain narrative, and they're not just "huh, look at the bunch of pretty pictures I made". Disavowing that is, to put it bluntly, dishonest to the conversation.

What narrative do you think the photos are trying to build? To make Poland in the 80's appear more quaint? Your paranoia seems. . . unwarranted.

I'm not sure you understand what a narrative is. Furthermore, you should learn punctuation before trying to use an ellipsis for dramatic effect, especially if you're trying to insult their intellectual abilities.

I love how poland embraces their history. Those beach baskets in Sopot are just typical of here and my wife’s grandparents have pictures in the same basket chairs that are out there today (kinda).

Many farm pictures can be seen with a 1 hour drive from Sopot today. There are some really remote places where people have horses, yet they have near gigabit LTE service. Borzestowo for example.

Coming from America where we have no single ancestor except “freedom” it’s hard to imagine why people would want to hang out there like that. However, it’s just part of the culture. We are lucky to be part of it.

Wow. It's uncanny that you mentioned Borzestowo of all places. It's tiny, and I used to own a house there. My mother was buying the house from my uncle — in my name — when I was a child. My uncle still owns the house. It's one of the three wooden A-frame holiday homes right by the lake.

I spent many summers there as a kid.

Is there a reason why the seats are facing away from the water?

Wind from the Baltic sea can be pretty cold, and the sunshine comes from the South.

Hmm, masses of concrete and falling apart houses are still in most cities, even today. Even some bigger towns.

Thank you.

I've been in Poland only in 2000's but while watching these photos I could not believe that this is what Poland looked in 80s. Looks like some kind of village in middle of nowhere in 60's. The pictures were clearly selected to portray it as somewhat poor and non-western. The question is tho: Why?

It's exotic and therefore interesting.

It also makes people better off feel better about themselves. "You finish that plate right now, kids in Africa/India/wherever would give anything to have your food!"

There's no conspiracy. Poland has really changed that rapidly during the '90s.

We are in the east of Poland and most of the farming scenes are still quite common. A lot of the clothing has hardly changed too for some older folks. It can be a real shock compared to the city.

Meh, I'm from eastern Poland (lived in a small village near Lublin in 80s and 90s, spent every vacations in even smaller village near Włodawa in what I can only call Poland C).

I've rarely seen horses, and when I did they were a novelty, tractors were much more common.

Yeah, I admit, it's hard to figure these things anecdotally. Our next door neighbor near Kazimierz plows with a horse and I do see that occasionally elsewhere. Things like hand tools, wooden wagons with rubber tires, organic fertilizer, scarecrows, free range animals and small family farms are also things I see frequently. Tractor ownership seems definitely less than 100%. From what I understand, there are some areas of the Lublin Voivodeship that are especially poor and this poverty might be highly localized.

I'm contrasting this with the USA where farming practices make use of a lot of highly specialized machines and huge scale. Actually many of the farmers I know in the USA are quite well off due to a combination of subsidies and very large operations.

WHile I understand you, you miss the “Through the lens” , Is his personal view, not the real life. That is exactly what photography should be , art.

People often complain that a photographer has objectified a particular subject whilst forgetting that cameras objectify everything that they capture regardless of the intention of the photographer.

What makes photography interesting is that a photo tells you everything and nothing about a subject.

Nothing shown in any photograph is real because you're looking at an impression of reality at a single moment in time.

It's not objectifying, it's stereotypising with the most werid stuff you can find.

Yeah you could find people riding on horse-drawn carts in Poland in 80s. 1 for every 100 cars or more. Now count cars and horses on these photos :)

I'm a kid of the '80s from fellow Socialist country Romania and this photo: https://i.imgur.com/LFWANdK.jpg could have as well been shot in my country back then.

Also, the image of the old Polish peasant lady crying just outside Auschwitz is really, really powerful: https://i.imgur.com/uqTGzLO.jpg . Her headscarf (we call it "basma" here in Romania) is almost identical to what my both grandmas used to wear.

I recall that the women of Warsaw were all clothed in style at the time, despite all the problem with the economy. How did they all manage?

Typically DIY and/or family in the West (or possibly Western charities).

Also trade trips to some other socialist countries that would happen to be better off at the moment. Depending on when exactly, it could be Czech Republic, Hungary, Yugoslavia etc.

Well, considering that the rural areas of Poland looked like that and seeing horse carts delivering coal in Katowice was nothing unusual back then I'm not entirely sure if it is so wrong considering how much of Poland is/was rural. Even though I must admit I miss this "modern socialist" architecture that was there in the bigger cities for sure.

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