DAISY AMES

Henry Cobb, from the renowned Pei Cobb Freed, gave a presentation to a small group of students and faculty today for Stanislaus von Moos’ Cold War Urbanism: Berlin seminar. However, he spoke about the images he took while he traveled to Warsaw in 1947, as a student at the Harvard GSD in 1947. These images were exceptional because they documented a time in Warsaw’s history that bridged Post-WWII destruction and pre- Stalinization. He used a polychromatic camera, very rare of the time, which drastically empowered the images and made the time immediately tangible and incredibly beautiful.  While he was documenting the ruins of Warsaw and cataloging the urban potential, he also photographed a few people he was staying with and working with. These were Poles who had survived concentration camps, and who had come back to Warsaw to start a new life and rebuild the city. He was struck by their enthusiasm, despite the fact that their lives had been destroyed, noting the happiness they saw in the opportunity to build again.  These were Communists in a time just before Stalin’s Communism arrived and imposed Social Realism that turned their modernist aspirations upside down. These rare polychromatic images allow us to see a world of destruction without a black and white grain, and prevent disassociation that occurs since the BW images often reinforce distance in time. As someone who was born in 1984, having no personal nostalgia to Warsaw, the color images of a Post-War environment and people basking in the glory of their dreams to rebuild life and a city again was truly moving.