Grandma Irenka

Yesterday I spent some time in the studio and here is one of my newest cyanotypes – Grandma Irena.

The photo itself has a very interesting story. It was taken around 1947 by a reporter from one of the newspapers of the time. Originally, it depicted three girls – a bricklayer’s troika – working on the reconstruction of Warsaw. One of them was Irenka, my husband’s grandmother.

Photo: Polska Agencja Prasowa

At that time, Warsaw was literally a sea of ruins. It was bombed to the ground by Germans in 1944 after the Warsaw Uprising. I intentionally don’t use the word Nazis, for there was never such a nation or country. The use of the word Nazi is, in my opinion, a psychological escape from facing the responsibility for the atrocities committed during World War II by grandparents and great grand parents of todays Germans. So, what did they do in Warsaw? During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, they killed approximately 200,000 people out of 1,600,000 residents. Those who survived were sent to concentration camps. Only 100 000 survived the war. Then Germans bombed the city, so that not one stone was left standing. They killed the city.
When the war finished and the new rulers saw what was left of the rebel city, they decided to move the capital to another place and leave the ruins as a war memorial. They couldn’t believe it was possible to rebuild Warsaw. But as soon as the war ended, masses of people released from concentration camps began to flow into the city. One of them was Irena.

„Look how beautiful I was,” she told Paweł, pulling a newspaper, yellowed with age, from her treasure chest. It’s true. Irena – the girl on the right, even in denim – looks like a model in his eyes.
One day, after Irena’s death, Paweł saw a book in a bookstore window titled „Women of Marble.” On its cover was a photograph he knew so well. After all those days it still existed! He bought the book and kept it as a memento of his beloved grandmother.
Time passed. Paweł met me, and I discovered cyanotype. I also recognized Grandma Irenka on the cover. Christmas Eve arrived. What should I give my husband? I picked up the book. Surely, the copyrights were there, and they would lead me directly to the photo’s owner. It turned out that the newspaper’s photographic archive had been acquired by the Polish Press Agency (PAP). After a few phone calls and a few emails, a scan of the photo was on my computer.

At that time, I was just starting my adventure with cyanotypes. I was also just starting to learn photo editing in Photoshop. Photoshop itself had very limited options for enlarging photos without losing quality. So, I made a cyanotype in the original 9×13 cm format.
However, a lot has changed in those few years. AI engines allow you to enlarge photos and improve their quality.
– Would it be possible to crop Grandma out of this photo and make a portrait of her for me?
– Probably, but I have to check.
I sat down to process it. I reframed and enlarged the photo to A3 size. I exposed the cyanotype a few times to bring out the halftones, and this is the result: Grandma Irenka. Beautiful and young. Forever.