Post Industrial Czechia

Rafal Milach

2000 – Ongoing — Czechia

About this series

In the early 2000s, at the very beginning of his photographic career, Rafał Milach began to document Upper Silesia — an area stretching from southern Poland into areas of Czechia, predominantly known for its heavy industry. 
Over twenty years later, he returns to the region in which he grew up, this time across the border on the Czech side: “That is why I was excited to browse previously unseen photographs by Magnum photographers who came to Czechoslovakia to document its liberation from the Soviet occupation and, in the late 1980s, the fall of the communist regime and the euphoria that accompanied it. I wondered if, when photographing scenes from everyday life taking place on the periphery of the political spectacle, they were accompanied by the same feeling of heightened senses that I experienced many times when crossing the Czech border several decades later. These experiences, separated by several decades, are seemingly different in almost everything; from the political and economic context to the photographers’ countries of origin. However, one can attempt to connect them through their common denominator: a search for the identity of a region that has undergone a radical political and economic transformation. More than 35 years have passed since The Velvet Revolution, but the consequences are still felt in many places today.”
In collaboration with  Magnum Photos – A World in Color

Photographer: Rafal Milach
Nationality: Polish
Based in: Warsaw, Poland
Website:  rafalmilach.com
Instagram: @rafal.milach

Rafal Milach is a professor at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School of Silesian University in Katowice, Poland. He has received scholarships from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Magnum Foundation, and European Cultural Foundation. Rafal is a finalist of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Polityka Passports Award, a winner of the Author Book Award at Rencontres Phototographiques d’Arles and World Press Photo contest. He is a co-founder of the Archive of Public Protests and Sputnik Photos collectives. His work has been widely exhibited, and is part of the public institutional collections worldwide. Rafal is a member of Magnum Photos.