Rest Behind the Curtain
For the last three decades in the former Communist states that had been locked behind the Iron Curtain, a crazy chase has been unfolding. The ideal is that everyone should run to catch up with western wealth. There is a ‘no holds barred’ frenzied approach and even though not everyone keeps the same pace, the impression is that we need to draw level with the mystical West that
remained beyond reach for many years. We are already very close in many fields. In others we are the same or even better. We work so hard, much harder than they do. At some time the belief is that it has to pay off. In a long run this chase exhausts everyone. There is something in every society that works like an emergency brake of sort – It’s holidays and the annual vacation. At these times we can stop running; slow down and cease having to prove anything.
In my work I try to explore the habits and rituals of the season, which altogether comprise the holiday culture of the region. Tourism in the east side of the Iron Curtain, in contrary to that in most other countries, was not a branch of economy but rather a social movement. Soviet tourism and spa vacations were characterized by the sense of purposefulness and belonging. The
main aim, alongside receiving some cultural uplift and education, was to allow the vacationers to recover their health and energy and return to work stronger than before.
Magnificent spas were built for the workers who could rest and re- energize on a pseudo-futuristic health regime in preparation for the working year ahead. The question of leisure was one that preoccupied Soviet thinkers. Free time and work were not separate but connected and regular sanatorium stays for workers were seen as a way of increasing productivity. Soviet workers were sent to sanatoriums once a year so that they could return refreshed and ready for work.
Of course a lot has changed since the collapse of the curtain. Many of the states have been going through a cultural transformation. Holidays became more and more associated with consumerism and hedonism rather then recreation and recuperation.
The experience of space conditions our experience of time. The sensation of the feeling introduced by space sometime can awaken the concealed memories on a personal level as well as deep-going cultural memories about the existence of which we might be even not aware.
My intention is to create the images that would fit my vision of the past. Sort of invoking the childhood memories again. I travel to the places where time had stopped, in search for stillness and monotony of the former Eastern Block. From here and now I try to dig into the past to create the images conceived by nostalgia, experiences and memories of someone who was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain.
Michal Solarski’s long-term project “Rest Behind the Curtain” explores the holiday culture in the Eastern European States and the former Soviet Republics and does so with great sensitivity. The photographer invites us to reflect upon the habits and rituals typical of tourism in these regions by using highly evocative imagery. Be the subject an individual or a landscape, the overall feeling is that of nostalgia and a sense of belonging. Each photograph acts as the access key taking the observer into a dreamscape where the border between reality and memory is blurred. It is like finding yourself in a suspended time that has the same power of childhood memories.