When the Owners Have Gone
The town of Częstochowa in south-west Poland exists in Polish consciousness as a religious site, a pilgrimage destination for anyone who wants to win the favours of the Black Madonna with a Scar residing in a monastery there. However, before the war, it used to be home to nearly forty thousand Jewish citizens, most of them killed in extermination and labour camps in 1940s. After the war their houses often began to be occupied by new arrivals, people who came from elsewhere, often from far away. They didn’t have the keys so a new lock was put in place, while the old keyhole was painted over. The tenement houses in the former Jewish quarter are now often used by the local council as social housing for the poorest and marginalized who would never be able to afford to own flat. There is an omnipresent sense of not belonging in the area, of being uprooted and disconnected that contributes to the urge people feel to move out despite the fact that there is no way out. Apart from aiming to capture the psychological ramifications of the past, the impossibility of full life after the previous world, as Roman Vishniac has put it had vanished, I also had a strong sense that photography was the only way left to preserve these places before they collapse.