What did Warsaw from a bird’s eye view look like on the eve of independence? What was the view onto the capital from rooftops of tenement houses and church steeples? Open-air exhibition of photographs from Robert Marcinkowski’s collection opens on 13 May in Jan Twardowski Square.
The photographs displayed in the exhibition present tsarist Warsaw, then confined to the area of the city centre. The capital on the eve of independence is a densely built-up area surrounded by the fields which are now turned into districts, such as Mokotów, Praga, Żoliborz, Ursynów.
The exhibition is mostly composed of reconnaissance photos taken by German military aviators and the postcards of Warsaw from that time. It is the portrait of the city that no longer exists.
Beside the images of the city, we will see reconnaissance photographs with buildings of strategic importance, such as bridges, railway stations, power plants, gas plants, water filters, as well as forts located in the suburbs. It is worth pointing out that the forts are now surrounded by buildings, whereas a hundred years ago the space around them was empty.
The photographs from the exhibition are of a special historical value and some of them, especially those taken from lower altitude, tell us more about the old capital than several hundred photographs taken from the ground. If a photograph was taken from low altitude one can see whether there were bay windows protruding from a tenement house, if it was a five- or a six-storey building, if it had balconies in one or two lines, explains Robert Marcinkowski, the exhibition curator. Much as we are not able to reconstruct architectural details of buildings, these photographs give as an idea of their shape. We may learn what the buildings looked like, if there were a factory or small wooden houses between tenement houses. This knowledge cannot be overestimated. Up till now we have not had it.
The exposition Aerial perspective of the city. Warsaw on the Eve of Independence was annotated by the curator’s commentary. The exhibition is in Jan Twardowski Square at Krakowskie Przedmieście from May, 13th to September, 30th.
Curator: Robert Marcinkowski, cartographer and varsavianist. He is the author of a dozen or so books. A long-time member of the Committee on Street Nomenclature, a unit of the Warsaw City Council. He was awarded Order of Merit of Warsaw.
