My Thoughts about Public Spaces / A Photo Essay from Poland

I took a couple of days off to regroup after finishing a long-term project and dove into my black-and-white world again.

In fact, I guess this is a long-term project too, just without a clear path right now. It’s about the way people treat what is public, what is everybody’s, and the way public spaces are shaped changes how we feel when using them, and living with them.

I honestly think it says a lot about society. Because the values of each society are mirrored in the types of buildings which dominate the city - either its banks, fancy shops, and offices when money is the key value, or history - churches, shipyards, boulevards, statues, when nations look for their common experiences in the past, to bond them in the present.

My understanding is that architecture and urban planning are similar to language when interacting with the society which uses them. Language influences how we feel and what we do, and the way we live comes right back to language and shapes it to be more useful, modern, and fitting.

The way a street, a building or the whole city looks can, I think, drive how people interacting with it feel and treat each other. And the way people are comes right back to bricks, concrete, and stone and transforms it to reflect society.