So on no sleep whatsoever I force myself to finally do two walking tours to see the city. Around 10 am I’m necking a double espresso in a cafe just off the main square, blinking through bleary eyes and feeling boozy-party-come-down-paranoia you only regularly get from staying out all night on the sauce. It’s going to be a long day.
I’ve done enough free walking tours to merit some kind of free walking tour badge. The reason I go on these meandering waffling escapades is because, A: it’s free, and B: it’s a lazy way to be led round the sites to take some nice pictures. Most of the dates, figures, kings, queens, waifs, etc, etc breeze over my head, especially when I’ve not slept. Once you’ve seen one walking tour, you’ve seen them all. Not so with Krakow.
It’s a beautiful city, no doubt about that, but with such a turbulent and haunting past. Poland hasn’t been a recognised country for very long, clamoring against the struggles and strife’s of it’s noisy neighbours. As such Krakow has a real mix of influences, from Baroque through Gothic through art deco. It’s a grey, overcast morning, and I decide to shoot black and white, with some hints of colour here and there. Yes I was probably getting all arty-wank and borrowing heavily from Battleship Potemkin, (and then later and more topical, the red coated girl in Schindler’s List); but I cared not. It somehow suited the history of the city.
Looking down to Saint Mary’s Basilica
It was the afternoon walk and subsequent visit to Schindler’s factory that really stole the show. Take an interest in what happened, add a dash of film affection-ado and a sprinkling of sobriety, and I was in my element; albeit a very somber and macabre one. The locations for shooting the film, what little remains of the ghetto, and the factory itself were all staunch reminders of mankind’s darkest hours. Yet there were glimpses of hope, of regeneration and reflect. On a bridge linking the Jewish quarter with the old ghetto, there were thousands of padlocks. While not strictly a Krakow custom, lovers would chain the lock to the railings, and throw the keys into the Vistula river, a symbol of their undying love. I photographed in colour. Round the corner, 33 empty chairs as part of the ghetto memorial, suggesting a feeling of absence. I shot in black and white.
The padlocks
Schindler’s factory has been turned into one of the finest museums of it’s kind in the world. If you’ve ever been to The British War Museum, or Eden Camp in North Yorkshire you’d know what you’re in for. Beautiful art instillations, powerful exhibits, you’re transported back in time with a real attention to detail. One of the most memorable sections involved walking through a replica of the inside of the ghetto. Everything was exactly how it would have been, with the sounds of a crowded home ringing in your ears. There must have been around ten people shoehorned into the room, from babies crying to women washing to grandpa fixing himself up in the mirror. And they were all made of white resin. Ghosts in the corridors of the past. Not for the first time a shudder down the spine as I moved on.
Then there was Schindler himself. A dodgy business man, a womaniser and an extortionist. He managed to bribe Nazi officials into saving the lives of over one thousand Jews destined for the death camps. However don’t believe everything you see in Spielberg’s masterpiece. The sensationalist director added some Hollywood spin of his own. Schindler never made the list himself, in reality only knowing a handful of his own staff. Nonetheless, and whatever his motives were, ‘he who saves one life, saves the world entire.’ There is hope in remembering those saved, but equally it is those who perished who must never be forgotten.
Absence
It’s dark by the time I lose myself in the Jewish quarter, lost both literally and imaginatively, almost overwhelmed by the things I’ve seen and learned today. Krakow is a city of extremes, with the shadowy remnants of the holocaust giving way to the seemingly endless drunken British and Irish stag nights. From a Soviet occupation just as detrimental as that of the Nazi’s, to a city rightly proud of their most famous son; Pope John Paul II. It’s finding it’s feet and has a bright future on the world stage. It pains me that I am forced to leave, but not without one last roll of the dice. Maybe one day I’d be clipping a padlock to a bridge, and throwing the keys into the water.
The padlocks
Looking down to Saint Mary’s Basilica
The theatre, modeled on the Paris opera house
Singing naughty songs
The largest square of it’s kind in Europe
Infamous for it’s pigeons, a Krakow witch was once said to turn all the kings knights into the birds
The head
A famous window
The Jewish Quarter
Stairs used in Schindler’s list
Over the river to ghetto regeneration
The padlocks
Absence
Salvation awaits; the gates to Schindler’s factory
Krakow
So on no sleep whatsoever I force myself to finally do two walking tours to see the city. Around 10 am I’m necking a double espresso in a cafe just off the main square, blinking through bleary eyes and feeling boozy-party-come-down-paranoia you only regularly get from staying out all night on the sauce. It’s going to be a long day.
I’ve done enough free walking tours to merit some kind of free walking tour badge. The reason I go on these meandering waffling escapades is because, A: it’s free, and B: it’s a lazy way to be led round the sites to take some nice pictures. Most of the dates, figures, kings, queens, waifs, etc, etc breeze over my head, especially when I’ve not slept. Once you’ve seen one walking tour, you’ve seen them all. Not so with Krakow.
It’s a beautiful city, no doubt about that, but with such a turbulent and haunting past. Poland hasn’t been a recognised country for very long, clamoring against the struggles and strife’s of it’s noisy neighbours. As such Krakow has a real mix of influences, from Baroque through Gothic through art deco. It’s a grey, overcast morning, and I decide to shoot black and white, with some hints of colour here and there. Yes I was probably getting all arty-wank and borrowing heavily from Battleship Potemkin, (and then later and more topical, the red coated girl in Schindler’s List); but I cared not. It somehow suited the history of the city.
Looking down to Saint Mary’s Basilica
It was the afternoon walk and subsequent visit to Schindler’s factory that really stole the show. Take an interest in what happened, add a dash of film affection-ado and a sprinkling of sobriety, and I was in my element; albeit a very somber and macabre one. The locations for shooting the film, what little remains of the ghetto, and the factory itself were all staunch reminders of mankind’s darkest hours. Yet there were glimpses of hope, of regeneration and reflect. On a bridge linking the Jewish quarter with the old ghetto, there were thousands of padlocks. While not strictly a Krakow custom, lovers would chain the lock to the railings, and throw the keys into the Vistula river, a symbol of their undying love. I photographed in colour. Round the corner, 33 empty chairs as part of the ghetto memorial, suggesting a feeling of absence. I shot in black and white.
The padlocks
Schindler’s factory has been turned into one of the finest museums of it’s kind in the world. If you’ve ever been to The British War Museum, or Eden Camp in North Yorkshire you’d know what you’re in for. Beautiful art instillations, powerful exhibits, you’re transported back in time with a real attention to detail. One of the most memorable sections involved walking through a replica of the inside of the ghetto. Everything was exactly how it would have been, with the sounds of a crowded home ringing in your ears. There must have been around ten people shoehorned into the room, from babies crying to women washing to grandpa fixing himself up in the mirror. And they were all made of white resin. Ghosts in the corridors of the past. Not for the first time a shudder down the spine as I moved on.
Then there was Schindler himself. A dodgy business man, a womaniser and an extortionist. He managed to bribe Nazi officials into saving the lives of over one thousand Jews destined for the death camps. However don’t believe everything you see in Spielberg’s masterpiece. The sensationalist director added some Hollywood spin of his own. Schindler never made the list himself, in reality only knowing a handful of his own staff. Nonetheless, and whatever his motives were, ‘he who saves one life, saves the world entire.’ There is hope in remembering those saved, but equally it is those who perished who must never be forgotten.
Absence
It’s dark by the time I lose myself in the Jewish quarter, lost both literally and imaginatively, almost overwhelmed by the things I’ve seen and learned today. Krakow is a city of extremes, with the shadowy remnants of the holocaust giving way to the seemingly endless drunken British and Irish stag nights. From a Soviet occupation just as detrimental as that of the Nazi’s, to a city rightly proud of their most famous son; Pope John Paul II. It’s finding it’s feet and has a bright future on the world stage. It pains me that I am forced to leave, but not without one last roll of the dice. Maybe one day I’d be clipping a padlock to a bridge, and throwing the keys into the water.