Industrial cultural heritage in Poland, using Upper Silesia as an example

In the 19th century, the eastern part of Upper Silesia, which at that time belonged to Prussia and the German Empire, developed into the most important mining region in Central Europe. For more than a century and a half, the landscape of the region was dominated by the enormous and often architecturally interesting silhouettes of mines, smelters, coking plants, and other industrial facilities. The communist era, in which the priority was not investment but the rapid extraction of mineral resources, largely preserved the industrial infrastructure and architecture. It was only the restructuring that began after the political change in the 1990s, during which most large companies were closed and some were demolished, that changed the image of the industrialized part of Upper Silesia.

The exhibition presents photographs by Anke Illing and Thomas Voßbeck, which have been taken over the past 20 years since 2005 as part of a wide variety of projects, not only on the subject of industrial culture. The industrial architecture of the region was not always the sole focus. However, within these various projects, there were always points of contact or thematic overlaps that dealt with the coal and steel region. The works were not solely documentary in nature, as in the projects on Upper Silesia from the air or the comparative works for the historical albums from the Ballestremschen Archive, but also dealt with the people and the region on different levels in an artistic way, as in Encounters in the Upper Silesian Industrial Area or in Structure and Architecture.

The photographs show snapshots of a region in transition, a region undergoing major changes, in which Upper Silesia is slowly but surely ceasing to be “a land of smelters and mines.”