Initially I was going to post an entry about the pregnancy parcel. It seems that after returning from a six week holiday in Australia (insert apology for blogging slackness here), all my friends in Krakow are carrying the preggers parcel or are just popping one open. Spring is definitely in the air. The thought however of photographing their bellies seemed a tad obtrusive. And also a bit boring. The bellies that would most probably agree to be photographed aren’t even big enough to be interesting. So no preggers parcel blog.

Instead here are some pics of the heaviest parcels that I ever had to carry up four floors of stairs. I nearly died and had mad calf cramps. Last November I decided to invest some money into printing arty/historical postcards about Krakow and its people. So far the Krakow postcard market tends to cater for the horse-buggy-and-church-in-background customer. I wanted to release something that I wouldn’t be embarrassed of if a foreigner visiting the place would purchase. I had 20 000 printed. Some 20 images taken by local photographers. Distribution is only now picking up.

The printing company delivered 20 odd packages weighing about 5 kilos each and had them dumped on the ground floor of our building. After lugging them up the stairs all on my own, the parcels collected dust for a couple of months, leaning against a wall in our spare room. Now we have purchased new storage space to keep them all in a semi-tidy existence.

The stack of postcard parcels in my cupboard

Now in some sort of order

Postcard - photo by Robert Kosieradzki

Postcard - photo by Robert Kosieradzki

Postcard - photo by Robert Kosieradzki

Kosieradzki died a while ago but he left a whole archive of photos from Nowa Huta from the 60s and 70s. He used to walk around the industrial utopia with a hidden camera (as photographing without Party permission was illegal), taking pics of the surroundings, the mass industrialisation, the pollution and daily life. Mrs. Kosieradzki has allowed me to use her husband’s images.