AirVenture 2000 — A Week Among the Aircraft and the Atmosphere
09 Poland in 2005 (Nineth Day)
By 2005, Poland was no longer a new destination for me. I had visited the country several times since my first trips in the early 1990s and had become familiar with its cities, people and distinctive atmosphere. This return offered an opportunity to revisit familiar places while also seeing how much had changed.
Poland had joined the European Union the previous year and was moving confidently into a new era. Streets and buildings were being restored, transport and visitor facilities were improving, and the country felt increasingly connected with the rest of Europe. Yet its history, traditions and individual character remained clearly visible.
These photographs record another stage in my continuing acquaintance with Poland: not the impressions of a first-time visitor, but observations made on returning to a country that had already become both familiar and rewarding
A colourful trompe-l’œil mural depicting an old Kraków street, painted across the wall of a historic courtyard. Its carefully rendered façades and receding roadway create the illusion of a view continuing through the building, contrasting with the surrounding red brick, pale masonry and barred windows. Photographed in Kraków in 2005.
A memorial plaque on the Grey House at 6 Main Market Square, marking the building used as the headquarters of Tadeusz Kościuszko and his staff at the beginning of the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising. Earlier that day, Kościuszko had taken his celebrated public oath in the square, accepting command of the national armed forces and pledging to defend Poland’s sovereignty and liberties. Photographed in Kraków in 2005.
A Ukrainian street musician wearing a traditional Cossack-style haircut and a long, flowing white moustache plays the many-stringed bandura amid the crowds of Kraków’s Rynek Główny. His partly shaved head with a long lock of hair recalls the distinctive oseledets traditionally associated with the Zaporozhian Cossacks. The bandura, related to the lute and zither, has long accompanied the songs and historical ballads of Ukraine’s travelling musician-storytellers, known as kobzars. Photographed in Kraków in 2005.
A closer view of a Ukrainian bandurist performing in Kraków’s Main Market Square. Wearing colourful Cossack-style dress, a long white moustache and the traditional shaved oseledets hairstyle, he plucks the numerous strings of his bandura while seated beside its red carrying case. The instrument, combining characteristics of a lute and a zither, has long been associated with Ukraine’s kobzars—itinerant musicians who preserved historical songs and epic ballads through oral performance. Photographed in 2005.
