Diana Lelonek, Untitled, from the series Yesterday I Met a Really Wild Man, 2015, pigment print on Baryta paper, 80 × 100 cm

Untitled, from the series Yesterday I Met a Really Wild Man is a project that Diana Lelonek (b. 1988) started in 2015. The artist photographed the area around the Katowice Steelworks in Upper Silesia, a place that plays a special role in her life. This is the area where she grew up, and her father worked at the steel mill. Returning to these familiar environs as an adult, Lelonek attempted to capture the transformations that took place in one of the most important industrial centers of communist Poland.

Her photographs reveal the juxtaposition of the monumental, if somewhat decrepit, steel mill in combination with the exuberant nature that has begun to re-capture the post-industrial area. The background of these images is complemented by a group of naked figures walking through fields of tall grasses. Their presence brings to mind a vision of primitive tribes, untainted by the achievements of modern civilization.

Lelonek’s series poses the question of the future of man’s relationship with nature. Degraded areas abandoned by humans become a testimony to nature’s ability to be reborn and regenerate even in the most hostile conditions.

Paulina Olszewska