Family: Rodzina
Rodzina, meaning ‘family’ in Polish explores the daily lives of the Polish community living in the United Kingdom. As of 2015, the number of UK residents born in Poland was estimated at 831,000, making them the largest foreign-born group in the country, and there is a wider population of British Poles, including the descendants of over 200,000 immigrants who settled in the UK a er World war II. is narrative wishes to document six different stories of individuals and families who have migrated to the United Kingdom. As a collaborative project between both the subjects and myself, it gives an insight into their lives without a photographer present.
I decided to call the project ‘Family: Rodzina’ because I found that the Polish community as a whole is one big family. Within meetings with Cheltenham Polish TARA and just generally noticing it, I found that Polish people were much more of a community than English people. Each and every person I had worked with in this project had helped in their local community somehow and are still very active in their local community; attending regular meetings and contacting the local government all help create a sense of togetherness.
What I found the most interesting about this project is how different people’s stories were. I asked every subject a set of ten questions, and every single answer was different for each person. We discussed Poland, why they moved from Poland and we also discussed Britain and what ‘Brexit’ meant to them. I feel privileged to have learnt about the lives of these people and I am full of hope for what the future brings to them. For me, photographing this project had proved challenging at times but also very rewarding.
I decided to call the project ‘Family: Rodzina’ because I found that the Polish community as a whole is one big family. Within meetings with Cheltenham Polish TARA and just generally noticing it, I found that Polish people were much more of a community than English people. Each and every person I had worked with in this project had helped in their local community somehow and are still very active in their local community; attending regular meetings and contacting the local government all help create a sense of togetherness.
What I found the most interesting about this project is how different people’s stories were. I asked every subject a set of ten questions, and every single answer was different for each person. We discussed Poland, why they moved from Poland and we also discussed Britain and what ‘Brexit’ meant to them. I feel privileged to have learnt about the lives of these people and I am full of hope for what the future brings to them. For me, photographing this project had proved challenging at times but also very rewarding.