This work is about the notion of a nobility of industry and its inevitable and unavoidable decline – partly through ideological decline, partly through neglect.
After many strikes and brutal conflicts between shipyard workers and the Polish Government during the 1970s and early 1980s, the shipyard workers of the historic shipyard in Gdańsk finally resolved this bitter conflict by an agreement, 21 Postulatόw, giving the shipyard workers better salary and working conditions.
Before signing the conditions the Gdańsk shipyard was one of the leading shipyards in the world producing over a thousand ships a year and with more than fifteen thousand workers. Now it’s all a shell of its former self. This work is an investigation of the shipyard and its workers situation after the fall of communism in the early 1980s and the Polish Government’s inability to honour their commitment to the shipyard. The shipyard’s future isn’t bright – it’s struggling to survive. They suffer under inescapable financial problems; many thousands of specialist shipbuilders have been redundant or forced to look for work in the neighbouring shipyard of Gdynia. Now there are only three thousand one hundred and six workers left at the Gdańsk shipyard (March, 2003) – each day is a struggle to save their shipyard and their livelihoods.
I wanted to return to Poland, my home country, and visit the shipyard in Gdańsk – a place so resonant of history and bravery now rapidly disappearing. I wanted to document the workers and the working conditions which they have to endure. The shipyard is strikingly empty now apart from sporadic work on this current ship when funding allows (March, 2003). In my images I hope to show the scale of this once noble industry, its sheer size, its weight, its presence – the workers are diminutive figures when placed within this industrial context yet their struggle seems titanic.
"Jurek was here" is a photographic project all photographed on 35mm film Agfa Optima.
