The First March of Gentlemen

At the turn of the 20th century, when western Poland was under German occupation, over 100 students of the Catholic People’s School took part in a strike against the German influence on their education. When Milach’s residency in Września coincided with street demonstrations in Poland, he couldn’t ignore the correlation between past events and the present. As a result, the children’s strike forms the basis of this metaphorical tale, retold through images from the archive of Września photographer, Ryszard Szczepaniak taken in the 1950s and 1960s. Mid 20th Century Poland was an oppressive time to live during the communist regime, and the subjects of these photographs by Szczepaniak - young men, out of uniform, posing and having fun - were in many ways subversive.

Milach detached the figures from Szczepaniak’s photographs, both literally and figuratively, from their original context and placed them onto bright, candy-coloured backgrounds. The figures are caged in geometric shapes, which, as the book progresses, increasingly constrict and restrain them. The figures remain oblivious to the building claustrophobia and their imprisonment – an effective metaphor for the illusion of freedom. Ania Nałęcka-Milach, designer of the book, created the physical object to reference the size and colour palette of children’s school exercise books, a layer of camouflage to the serious subject matter.