Solidarity, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.
Martial law in Poland existed between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983. The government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an attempt to counter political opposition, in particular the Solidarity movement.
Anna Walentynowicz was a Polish free trade union activist and co-founder of Solidarity, the first non-communist trade union in the Eastern Bloc. Her firing from her job at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980 was the event that ignited the strike at the shipyard, set off a wave of strikes across Poland, and quickly paralyzed the Baltic coast. The Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) based in the Gdańsk shipyard eventually transformed itself into Solidarity; by September, more than one million workers were on strike in support of the 21 demands of MKS, making it the largest strike ever.
Independent Students' Association is a Polish student society, created in October 1980, in the aftermath of the Gdańsk Agreement and the anti-government strike actions. It was a student arm, or suborganization, of Solidarity, and together with it, as well as other similar organizations, was banned after the implementation of martial law in Poland. Some activists were arrested, and others organized an underground NZS. After the fall of Communism in 1989, the organization was recreated, and its focus was changed from political to cultural, although it still stands by its origins, as seen by Polish students’ support for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. It now is the largest independent student organization in Poland, with 90 chapters at Polish universities and a total of 20,000 members.
Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Fall of Communism.
Jan Brunon Bułhak (1876–1950) was an early 20th century photographer in Poland and present-day Belarus and Lithuania. A published theoretician and philosopher of photography, he was an exponent of pictorialism. He is best known for his landscapes and photographs of various places, especially the city of Vilnius. He was the founder of the Wilno Photoclub and Polish Photoclub, the predecessors of the modern Union of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF), of which he was an honorary office-holder. He is also known as an ethnographer and folklorist.
Henryk Ross was a Polish Jewish photographer who was employed by the Department of Statistics for the Jewish Council within the Łódź Ghetto during the Holocaust in occupied Poland.
Mariusz Hermanowicz (1950–2008) was a Polish - French photographer, known for his ironic style documenting Poland of the communist years.
Mariusz "Mike" Adamski is a USA resident, an American aerial photographer, media manager and defense analyst who has flown many times worldwide with the United States Air Force and Polish Air Force at Krzesiny Air Base. He is a graduate of the National Defense University in Warsaw, Poland. Adamski's works have been published in books, postage stamps, important journals and aviation publications, such as Aviation Week & Space Technology, Air Forces Monthly and Flight International.
Jaroslav Beneš is a Czech photographer and co-founder of the photographic group called Český dřevák.
Erazm Ciołek was a Polish photojournalist, author of many exhibitions and laureate of various awards. He is considered as the main photographer of the Solidarity movement.
Emil Wojtaszek was a Polish politician who served as the minister of foreign affairs of the People's Republic of Poland from 1976 to 1980.
Zofia Rydet was a Polish photographer, best known for her project "Sociological Record", which aimed to document every household in Poland. She began working on "Sociological Record" in 1978 at the age of 67, and took nearly 20,000 pictures until her death in 1997. Many of the pictures remain undeveloped. The photographs are predominantly portraits of children, men, women, couples, families and the elderly amidst their belongings. Rydet tended to photograph her subjects straight-on, using a wide-angle lens and a flash.
Adam Lach is a Polish photographer. He is the co-founder of Napo Images and vice president of the Napo Foundation. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times,Le Monde, GEO magazine, The New Yorker, and Vice. He is the winner of several photo contests, including Pictures of the Year International and International Photography Awards. His photo essays have appeared at international exhibitions, including Polka Galerie at HSBC in Paris, the Prague Biennale, and the World Photojournalism Festival in Beijing. Between 2010 and 2012, he taught two subjects at the Institute of Journalism at the University of Warsaw.
Żanna Słoniowska is a Polish novelist and journalist. She was the first winner of the Znak literary prize for her novel The House with the Stained-Glass Window and a Conrad Prize winner.
Vogue Polska is the Polish edition of the American fashion and lifestyle monthly magazine Vogue. The magazine has been published since February 2018 and is the twenty-third local edition of Vogue.
Marian Schmidt (born in 1945 in Żyrardów, died on 7 March 2018 in Kraków) – Polish artist photographer. Member of Warsaw District of Polish Union of Artist Photographers. Co-founder of Warsaw School of Photography and Graphic Design.
The Archive of Public Protests is a collective of photographers and writers and their work documenting post-2015 protests in Poland, established in 2019. A website and an Instagram account host its images, and it also publishes Strike Newspaper. Members of the collective include co-founder Rafał Milach as well as Adam Lach and Chris Niedenthal. The collective has been nominated for the Spojrzenia award as well as the Paszport Polityki, and has had an exhibition of its work at Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin.
Witold Krassowski is a Polish photographer and university teacher. He twice won a prize in the international contest World Press Photo.
