Mariusz Forecki: DUST

12.7.2022
18:30 – vernissage / foyer Forum
19:00 – meeting / Klub Fama
5 Legionowa Street, free admission

Mariusz Forecki’s latest publication summarizes the many years of documentary work the photographer did in the countries of the USSR before, during and after its collapse. The exhibition, which the Bialystok Cultural Centre is presenting as part of the ZUBROFFKA festival, is an exceptional selection from several hundred photographs included in the book. The vernissage will be accompanied by a meeting with the author, during which it will be possible to find out whether the photography accurately predicted the birth of a new empire.

This book comes out only a few months after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, aggression that escalated into a regular war with all its cruel elements: the chaotic and brutal bombing of cities, using banned weapons, torturing and killing of civilians, rape, looting, and the biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II in 1945.
I gathered photographs from my numerous travels around the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — in the final stage of its existence and during the formation of a new socio-political order. I watched the former republics of the USSR regaining their independence. I saw the birth of new states, the struggle for identity, the return of displaced nations, and emigration in search of a better life. At that time, I did not realize I was witnessing events that became the symbols of the collapse of state built on tyranny and unimaginable human suffering. From the dust of this collapse emerged the image of the new empire which, with the help of brutal propaganda and modern social engineering, transformed itself — disguised as democracy — into the empire of evil, threatening the world based on the ideas of humanism and the human right to freedom and happiness.

Mariusz Forecki, July 2022

Mariusz Forecki (1962) a documentalist and author of books. For many years, he has been photographing a human entwined in socio-political processes. A graduate of the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic, and co-founder of PIX.HOUSE Foundation.
(www.forecki.pl)