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Awarded at the Best Dutch Book Designs 2019 and nominated for Mack First book awards 2020.

Technical details: 6-page cover, title in foil print and inside twice white. Swiss binding with brown yarn. Color on the cut corresponding to the paper color of the cover. UV offset printed.

In 2015 Maria Dabrowski decided to journey to Ukraine together with her mother. There her mother met family members on her father’s side and connected with her father’s past for the first time. This publication consists of a collection of photographs that were taken in the years from 2013 through 2016, wherein Dabrowski documents a personal investigation into the “roots” of her family that brought her to both Poland and Ukraine. It is a poignant and very personal narrative which reveals a story of expatriation, war crimes, and traumas. A conversation with her grandfather about his memories of Poland’s dark past completes the story. The title translates as “reveal” or “open”.

FORMAT Softcover, 98 pages, 210 x 280 mm

Maria Dabrowski (b. 1988, The Netherlands) researched her family roots, revealing a story of expatriation, war crimes and trauma. ‘Odsłonić’ her self-published monograph, consists of a collection of landscape and portrait photographs created between 2013-2016, making personal experiences and memories in relation to collective history intertwine. Particularly, the impact of communism and the Cold War on Dabrowski’s family are at the heart of the publication.

‘Odsłonić’ is a Polish word that translates to “reveal” or “open”. In 2015, when Dabrowski travelled to Ukraine with her mother, she reconnected with the family and learned of her grandfather’s past. In 1939, at the age of eight, Dabrowski’s grandfather was deported to Siberia – along with his parents, who were forced to work in the kolkhozes (Soviet collective farms). Meanwhile, their house and surrounding land were confiscated by the Soviets.

This information is revealed in an interview between Dabrowski and her grandfather. Their conversation is incoherent partly due to his impaired hearing and distressing memories. The oddness of this conversation provokes a suggested link with the surreal imprint of the Soviet system, somehow exemplifying how the theatrical and disruptive character of the regime has had psychologically affected the generation of Dabrowski’s grandfather.

‘Odsłonić’ consists of grainy photographs which are printed on a matt paper in warm and dim tones, a technique which additionally intensifies the atmosphere felt from the work. The tactile experience of going through the book triggers something between melancholia and nostalgia. The publication is soaked in suspense and what we are witnessing is a personal family story told through Dabrowski’s inner dialogue expressed by means of photography.

Text: Linda Zhengová