Średnia Wieś — Polished Village

Kresy, Wołyń, Akcja Wisła and Bieszczady. We should not trust our own eyes. The important things may sometimes be invisible, or they may have even disappeared. Behind the visible, there is information that must be reached in other ways. That can also be said about most of written texts, they contain things that are invisible to first-time readers. Sometimes writings hide more than they reveal. I watched Średnia Wieś for a long time blindly, not know- ing the tough history of the area around it. I came here for the first time just because this low hilly area was the part of Poland furthest away from Finland. I had not considered the flat Poland of my first trip interesting enough for my photography projects, I looked for a more inspiring environment and so I headed to hillier regions. Of the five places I found I ended up in Northern Carpathia. My photos of the village of Średnia Wieś, in the Bieszczady region of South-Eastern Poland, are taken during 36 years, the last ones in April 2015. During that time both Poland and Średnia Wieś have gone through major changes. The collapse of the Socialist regime, and later the accession of Poland to the European Union. The communist-socialist countries that had wasted themselves to disaster turned capitalist, the political map of all of Eastern Europe changed, and as we see, the chang- es are still going on. Now they are violent – once again in Europe. The asymmetric development of nations plays a role, as does their geopolitical location.