Travel /
Pics of Warsaw by the Guardian's David Levene [107]
Anyway these photos seem to have done the job.
This is probably my last post on these photos, but I couldn't stay away ;-)
Yeah, they have done the job, fair enough. An old lady stands scowling right next to the Royal Castle and Sigismund's Column, but we only get to see a nondescript wall and a shadow. A view of the Palace of Culture and Metro Centrum shows not a peek of Aleje Jerozolimskie, an artistic and photographic feat in itself. Park Skaryszewski looks like two very ordinary rows of trees with an alley in the middle. If you've never been inside a milk bar, the "service hatch" picture will not give you a clue. It mainly shows you a a very sceptical-looking lady. In the picture of Warsaw's "financial district" the photographer has managed to make it look old, tired, and tiny, consisting of two dirty-looking tower blocks. The man selling the fox skins again looks very embarrassed. Has the photographer asked for permission to take his picture? I'm not really sure. The Śląsko-Dąbrowski bridge is another masterpiece of censorship, having been reduced to a pavement with some tiny people seen from above. Nobody could tell what it looks like, whether it's beautiful or ugly, large or small. The view of Ursynów is realistic, I agree, but possesses no merit beyond that. It's just a random snapshot. In the picture of the Vistula, the photographer has again managed to exclude from the view anything remotely interesting or unique (don't tell me heating and power stations are unique, OK?). Palace of Culture meets Kebab Van - again, the surrounding architecture is non-existent. If you have never been to Warsaw, you might as well think there is really nothing there. Milk Bar II - again, I don't see the milk bar, I see a voyeuristic shot of old people eating. People should never be photographed when they eat.
What Mr Levene has (deliberately, I assume) left OUT of his pictures seems to be the problem here, not the pictures as such.
