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#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}When Mikolaj Nowacki calls Poland’s Odra the “river of history,†he might as well be talking about his own life. Having grown up along the river, even its damp smells linger in his memory. After originally pursuing a doctorate in space law, he turned his back on that profession to become a newspaper photographer. Two years ago, he was accepted into the mentor program at VII Photo, where he has been working with Antonin Kratochvil. Mr. Kratochvil taught him his most important lesson yet: “There’s only one way, and it’s your way.â€
The following conversation, conducted by e-mail, has been edited.
What are your earliest memories of the Odra river? How did your relationship to the Odra change over time?
When I was 5, I moved with my parents to new, concrete blocks of flats in the Biskupin district in Wroclaw, Poland. The neighborhood was a five-minute walk from the river. In the late ’70s, my neighborhood was “at the end of the city,†as everybody said. Odra was a natural border between the city and the wilderness. My first memories from the river were walks on the narrow path on a half-wild embankment with my parents. It was in a hot summer. I remember the strong smell of river mud. This smell accompanied me my whole childhood.
From my room, I could see trees on embankments and the faraway forest. When the water was high, I could see the river. At night in the summertime, when I slept by fully open windows, I remember the thunder of a waterfall which was under the Bartoszowicki Weir. I loved this sound. When I was older, I walked with my best friend to Opatowicka Island, which was a totally wild place. It is a large island on the river, half covered by deep forest and half with meadow. There are 200-year-old trees and many of them lay down on the ground, rotten. Truly wild nature. It’s a part of the primeval forests of the river valley.
Once, under Communism, some forest worker told us everything on the island would be cut down! We sat below a tree and cried. Luckily, they only “cleared†the forest and left older trees. Anyway, it looked horrible. I felt as if someone cut out half of my soul.
When I was 13, I became interested in ornithology. Till the beginning of my law studies, I walked many kilometers down and up the river in search for rare species of birds. It was a difficult time of adolescence. By the river and with a binocular, I felt free and safe.
Mikolaj Nowacki Lukasz Szymanski; his fiancée, Maria Szukalska; their dog, Daisy; and Capt. Czeslaw Szarek in the ballast water of a newly built barge on the Odra river. From “The Last Kings of Odra.â€How did your visits to Odra and your interest turn into a photography project?
It wasn’t obvious in the beginning. I finished my three previous projects and was looking for something close. I wanted to have my own, personal long-term project. My photography teacher, Tomasz Tomaszewski, the National Geographic photographer, asked me what I like. I answered with some hesitation, “You know, I like… water.†Not long after my talk with Tomasz, I realized how very much I like Odra. I thought I could photograph connections of people with this river in my home city, Wroclaw. So in late 2008 I consciously took the first photograph of the project. It was a night picture of the last barge of the year before winter, which came to power plants with coal and was unloaded.
At that time I couldn’t imagine shooting the river’s whole length â€" it’s 530 miles! I thought that it’s too difficult and too expensive. So at first I started to look for different connections of people with the river, and I also started to photograph sailors transporting barges on Odra.
Mikolaj Nowacki Barges with coal are unloaded by a crane at a power plant’s port. Ninety percent of the coal comes to the plant on barges. From “Odra, Part 1.â€For the second part of the series, which you call “The Last Kings of Odra,†it looks as though you spent a lot of time on this barge and encountered a lot of characters. Did you get along or did they view you with suspicion?
Since 2009 I’ve spent time in different parts of the year on ships with Capt. [Czeslaw] Szarek and his crew. This is a chorus of my whole Odra story. He is the only captain on the river who transports really huge, newly built barges.
Most of the crew consists of characters. The captain himself is the strongest character. He is short tempered, curses incredibly, smokes all day and writes poetry during long days behind the steering wheel. He is the real man of the river. Even when he must go to a dentist, he goes there by his ship when he can. He reminds me somewhat of those pilots from Mark Twain’s book “Life on the Mississippi.â€
Another character is his faithful sailor Zbyszek Laskowski, who looks like the famous French cartoon character Asterix. Short, bald, with a thick mustache, very well built and strong like a bull. In summer, he is always bare-chested. He can do everything on the ship, from dragging out an anchor to complicated engine repairs. He says that he’s tough as concrete, and most of the year he spends on the ship. He has a wife, daughter and a small son, and he misses them very much. He says that he will sail till the end of the world and one day longer.
As I also love the river life, I found a common language with the captain and the rest of the crew. After some time they came to treat me as another member, the one with a camera.
Did the crew tell you stories?
I remember one story told to us by a younger sailor. Before becoming a river man, he used to be a hooligan, an extreme soccer fan. The story was about bloody street fights between two soccer fans’ gangs. We talked many hours in a wheelhouse. It was a hot summer night last year. His story was so strong that the next morning another sailor complained that he slept very badly. He dreamed that a gang chased him, captured and beat him. Poor guy was screaming in his sleep.
The first part of your Odra series seems to contain a more general look at life on a river â€" there are floods, rowing competitions, a staged protest and children playing. What do these images have in common? What is different?
In that part, I wanted to look for as many connections of people with the river as I was able to find. I also wanted to show the river’s nature. Sometimes the connection wasn’t that obvious, like the reconstruction of fights on Grunwaldzki Bridge in Wroclaw. Other connections were deeper, like fishermen in the Szczecin Lagoon estuary (Slides 11 and 19). I wanted to pay attention to how it matters to people’s lives and how nature is beautiful. Many people are not aware of it. They think of the river only in the case of flood.
Mikolaj Nowacki Residents tried to stem floodwaters that had just broken an embankment in Wroclaw during a 2010 flood. From “Odra, Part 1.â€Which picture is your favorite in the series?
My favorite photograph from the series is children playing in water, taken where I grew up. The waterfall in the background was like music when I was falling asleep in my childhood. For me, everything is perfect in this photograph. When I took it, I couldn’t believe in my luck. I had taken a bicycle and camera and rode along embankments around the Great Island. I did it often. I even started to call it, facetiously, “Odra’s Photographic Bicycle Patrol.†From the distance, from the embankment, I saw three children playing in water. I approached their father and explained who I am and what I do, and asked if I may take some photos. He agreed. Then I asked the kids. They also agreed. They returned to their play and I spent an hour with them. Suddenly, one of the boys jumped into the water from the sandy beach while two others swam. This picture reflects my memory of the river, and, what’s more important, it could have been a photo of me in childhood.
Having grown up nearby, was there anything about this project that surprised you? Anything that angered you?
I think the most surprising was for me the discovery that on Lake Dabie there’s an old concrete ship on shallow water (below). It was a tanker built at the end of World War II by the Nazis. Due to lack of steel, it was built of concrete. The Russian Air Force sank it, and the ship was later taken up by Polish divers and was dragged to the lake. It’s now a tourist attraction.
But what really angers me is the fact that so many wild places along Odra are unprotected or that the protection is very superficial.
Have you changed over the course of this undertaking?
During these five years of work on this project, my own photographic style emerged. I’ve become uncompromising in choosing subjects and the time of when to photograph. When working for newspapers and doing assignments for magazines, I learned to take the most of the given situation I had to cover. During this personal work, I learned the most important thing â€" how it is to be free.
Mikolaj Nowacki The wreckage of a concrete ship, Urlich Finsterwalde, at dawn on Dabie Lake in Szczecin. From “Odra, Part 1.â€Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.
