It is one of those sweltering, sunny days in Warsaw – Poland is surprisingly hot in the summer, the polar opposite of the severely depressing, minus-degree winter. I’m meeting up with members of the photography collective Sputnik, which specialises in similar contradictions. Like its namesake, it’s a small blip in space in the grand scheme of things, but it manages to transmit around the globe. Focusing on substantial social, cultural, political and economic dispatches from Eastern Europe and the countries that were, until relatively recently, satellites of the USSR, its work speaks of the complexities of the exciting – and traumatic – transformation from communism to capitalism, and the ways in which these countries struggle with their newfound identities.
There are nine photographers in Sputnik – Andrej Balco, Manca Juvan, Andrei Liankevich, Michal Luczak, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Rafal Milach, Agnieszka Rayss, Adam Pańczuk and Jan Brykczyński – and I am joined by the last four, all based in Warsaw. My first impression is that they are a focused and diligent group of serious-minded, smart individuals, but they’re also extremely witty. Sitting outside a bar in the Praga area of the capital, the conversation turns to the hairdryer and its efficacy in soothing babies – some of the photographers are sleep-deprived recent parents, and have discovered the joys of white noise. From there the conversation turns to vacuum cleaners, of which some of the members are enthusiastic collectors.
There is a strong camaraderie between them. As a collective, they work in unison, providing each other with mutual support and seeing the benefits in group projects financed by various funding bodies; this funding allows them to work on individual projects while adding to a bigger picture. They officially launched Sputnik in 2006, but many of the members met at a workshop two years earlier, where they “realised that we all possessed a common energy with similar photographic concerns”, says Milach, who could be considered the main spokesperson.
“We decided to join forces so this energy would not fly away. We came from various backgrounds – some are photojournalists, I am a graphic designer, others are part-time photographers – but we all understood that we could not develop more considered and long-term projects as mere individuals,” he adds.
“We did not want to start an agency with a commercial initiative, especially as most of us were already represented by agencies,” says Rayss. “What we wanted was a freedom to develop work from our own perspectives.”
Poland, where five of the nine are based, also saw its position change in 2004 when it joined the European Union. Where the Polish once felt like outsiders, says Milach, they suddenly found they were attracting attention, funding and initiatives such as the workshop. Photography festivals in Łódź and Krakow also began at this time, heralding a new enthusiasm for photography, which helped Polish image-makers break out internationally. In this they were also aided, and funded, by healthy editorial commissions from publications both at home and abroad – something that’s sadly not the case any more. “They send no one now – just use some guy with a cellphone!” says Milach.
As his comment suggests, traditional print is rapidly dwindling as new platforms with less healthy editorial budgets take over; documentary photographers need to be adaptable and independent to survive. Both factors make joining a collective a savvy choice, having an anarchistic element of combining individuality with mutual benefits. As Henri Cartier-Bresson said: “Anarchy is an ethic.”
Sputnik capitalises on this individuality, representing the changes in Eastern Europe through documentary images that add a personal perspective. “We realised we were not reporters in the objective sense, but that if we go to Belarus, for example, we make personal rather than descriptive narratives – more metaphorical than literal,” explains Milach. The collective has created a working ethos based on “a history of failures”, experimenting with narrative forms and learning through experience.
Given this approach, I ask them about the importance of their audience and whether they hope to educate their viewers. “Maybe it sounds banal,” says Milach, “but we see our role as asking questions and stimulating an audience to read between the lines. With a huge number of images circulating, you get the impression that everything has been done, that there is an overload of information. We concentrate on what has been omitted – what seems not to be of interest to the mass media and audience – but also using the knowledge and context we already have.
“The message we try to give is not a simple one,” he says. “Of course, some of it can work well in an editorial context, but I prefer the confusion – to be confronted with images that make me wonder why they have been presented in a particular way.”
Getting the work out is of prime importance, and Sputnik uses different vehicles to do so – including books, the internet, multimedia presentations, exhibitions and low-budget though beautifully designed magazines that are given away free. Inevitably, the work also ends up in more mainstream magazines, and they are also prolific bookmakers, individually and as a group. Distant Place – a collective endeavour by five of the photographers, focused on the Vistula river in Warsaw – was shortlisted for best book of the year at PhotoEspaña 2013. Their work has also achieved some success in galleries, and with various art organisations.
When we met, some of Sputnik’s members had just returned from a residency in Iceland, where they produced new work combining video, photography, sound and archive materials. They recently had a group exhibition of their project on Ukraine, in the Polish city of Lublin, a group exhibition at the Leica Gallery in Warsaw, and three exhibitions in the museum district of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Their work has also recently been on show at the Brighton Photo Biennial, in an exhibition called Five Contemporary Photography Collectives.
Operating in the buffer zone between East and West from a documentary and journalistic perspective, Sputnik’s natural affinity is with the East, yet they understand the other side well enough to straddle both comfortably. Poland was destroyed by the Germans and controlled by Russia for half a century. Inevitably, the Poles and their neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe are still trying to make sense of their recent history and reclaim the essence of who they are. There is still the feeling of the aftershock of history, and perhaps the volcano is not totally dormant – the spectre of Russia glows more ominously than at any time since the Iron Curtain opened.
When empires fall, instability follows, and this is Sputnik’s remit. A major project is Lost Territories, a study of post-Soviet republics that has so far encompassed Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, and will extend to the Caucasus. They aim to finish this epic project by 2016, the year marking the 25th anniversary of the collapse of USSR. “What we observe is that each country has its own unique experiences,” says Milach. “These are real periods of transition and we want to challenge the preconception or the myth that these places have moved on from the Soviet mentality.
“We are still mentally and emotionally linked to communism and the enduring struggle is that, in the attempt to find new identities, we are still connected to the old; in some countries they still find comfort in the old identity of communism. In a sense there is confusion, and this confusion is compounded by the new generation, who are not tied to the old system.”
Warsaw is a vibrant and eager city, bursting with creativity and keen young minds eager to learn and progress, and now inextricably connected to the wider world via the internet. Their attitudes are very different from that of the older generation, and yet they’re marked by its experiences. I meet Sputnik again at their headquarters, where they have invited me to talk to some students on a mentoring programme. Many of these young photographers have been working on long-term projects on memory and collective identity. Milach tells me the collective looks for photographers who have a strong visual language for this particular programme, and that all Sputnik can do is share their experience. “As photographers, some are at the same level as us but simply lack experience, and so we guide them and ensure the work they produce is focused,” he says. “Younger Polish photographers today are more aware, and certainly more advanced, than we were back in 2006.”
Sputnik also teaches photography to children as young as three years old, and when I ask why, Rayss half-jokingly replies: “Because we want to learn from them!
“It is wonderfully refreshing to see children exploring the world with a camera and experiencing the joy of shooting everything around them,” adds Milach. “We encourage them to shoot their life at home.”
Sputnik is a great exemplar of a dynamic, modern-day photographic collective with the right intellectual and creative balance between recognising their circumstances and developing a selfless way of working. Their great virtue is in acknowledging where they come from as a strength, enabling them to document a changing Eastern Europe with intimacy and empathy.
www.sputnikphotos.com
The Winners, by Rafal Milach, is published by Gost, priced £40 / €50.