Stare i nowe w rejonie ulicy Zabłocie

Historia w fotografii zapisana

Abstract

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN THE ZABŁOCIE STREET AREA IN KRAKÓW. HISTORY ENCODED IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Since 1976 the Department of Documentation of Architecture and Urban Development of the Museum of Kraków has been taking photographs of Kraków, particularly of the areas located at some distance from the city centre that undergo rapid transformations in terms of urban planning. Photographs of the Zabłocie neighbourhood (a district located fairly close to the Old Town) have been taken regularly since 1981, and together they form a chronological timeline. Each of them is a document, frozen in time, a carrier of information about places that no longer exist, or have undergone substantial changes; it can also be a reference point in a story about the people who, over a period of almost a hundred years, created the industrial district of Zabłocie which is currently in the process of vanishing. What remains are fragmentary elements – symbols in the material, and in the verbal sphere (e.g. street names) – which will not signify the historical and cultural identity of this part of Kraków to everyone who encounters them. Historical photographs are priceless for the reconstruction of the old physiognomy of Zabłocie Street. Thanks to them and the complementary archival materials, such as maps, prints, descriptions, photographs from the first half of the 20th century, we are able to explore the industrial architecture of the Zabłocie district which no longer exists. In the 1970s a number of major investments in that area were halted by the economic crisis. The expansion of the Miraculum factory was never completed, while the expansion of the Institute of Glass and Ceramics was not even launched, although the land had already been allotted for that purpose. Local demolitions that increased from the end of the 20 century onward, and the trend to push industry out of the city’s boundaries changed the landscape of this part of Kraków immensely. The few surviving production and office facilities built in the era of Polish People’s Republic are currently being renovated and adapted to new functions. They do not possess artistic value, yet they are valuable as historical witnesses to the vanishing, industrial district of Zabłocie. The photographs are knowledge-forming communications, visual messages that regain bygone places and dene their socio-cultural role in the past; as a visible document of this space, they narrate the story of the landscape of the old, lost Zabłocie and the new one – a residential quarter with a focus on offices and services, a cultural phenomenon of development in this part of Kraków.