Fotograf Magazine

Getting into Rafał Milach’s book is quite a tough nut to crack. The book is colorful from all sides, it’s wrapped around with string, you unpack it like a Christmas present and it feels like a children’s pop-up book. Only part of this is intentional. Nevertheless, the content itself, though it maintains a playful form, bears much more complex and weighty themes. The First March of Gentlemen is a 72-page book composed of collages which mix with elements illustrating the children’s strike of 1902 with figures living during the Communist era half a century later. It thus demarcates a fictional narrative that can be read as a metaphor and that comments on the social and political tension of today. The book was created as part of the Kolekcja Września residency program, which selects an artist every year and sets him or her the task of creating a collection of photographs reflecting life in this city.