The author of the report on the demolition of Makrum in Bydgoszcz is Marianna Roszatycka, an architect and photographer. She has published her photographic reportage on tookapic.com, which is famous for running photo projects 365. Her project, which she has been running continuously since January 2016, includes nearly 200 photographs of the site that she has taken over the past seven years
The story of Macrum is the tale of every 19th-century industrial enterprise – through the work of hands and steam, flourishing from a small workshop in the inner city, growing out of it and out of the next in the urban space. Including the areas it had shaped since 1902: The twentieth-century outskirts of Bydgoszcz, today being the Forest Estate, which initially functioned as an inter-war villa district and, after the Second World War, became the Bydgoszcz embodiment of a workers’ housing estate
In 2015, Makrum’s manufacturing operations were relocated to the Bydgoszcz Industrial and Technological Park, and the site’s more than 100-year-old fabric began to be demolished in autumn 2019, eventually giving way to a 10-hectare residential, office and service development under construction here
The project First the People Disappeared, Then the Machines consists of digital and analogue photographs from 2016-2023, mainly those taken during the demolition, which lasted more than six months. After months of daily, uninterrupted observations, camera walks and documenting the demolition and progressive degradation of the structure, a story of change has emerged
It is a story about a monumental structure excluded from the city, inaccessible to the casual visitor, a carved-out fragment of a housing estate, emanating with night lights and the echo of welding machines. About a factory whose walls are finally opening up
Moving heavy industry out of city centres and returning their areas to residents is needed, even in the form of a transformation to merge the space. The question remains: are the two presses left behind by Makrum sufficient confirmation of the genius loci?
The reportage is only a preview of what can be found on Tookapic.com. It’s a site created in Poland to host 365 photo projects. What is a 365 project about? Take and publish one photo every day for a year. You will create a unique photo album for the photos you don’t want to forget. An album with the perfect number of photos
- You will develop a daily habit. Day by day. In small steps. And when you succeed with the habit of taking photos every day, you will quickly develop other habits.
- You will stimulate creativity. Perhaps you are a creative person who does not create. A photographer who doesn’t take pictures. A writer who doesn’t write? The Tookapic challenge will unlock you.
- You’ll improve your self-discipline. You will prove to yourself that you can keep your resolutions and achieve the goals you set for yourself.
- You will appreciate the mundanity of everyday life. You know what I mean, those ordinary moments of grey everyday life that don’t lend themselves to Instagram.
- You will get to know all the functions of your camera. Your equipment will have no secrets from you. You will get to know all the dials and buttons. You will learn to set the exposure correctly every time.
- You will take better photos. You don’t need any photography experience. The less you know the more you will learn. Most members are amateurs who have made great progress.
text: Magda Korzewska, Marianna Roszatycka
photos: Marianna Roszatycka
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