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The siege of Warsaw in the photographs of Julien Bryan

IPN has published the album “Siege of Warsaw in the photographs of Julien Bryan 1939”. The book is the first such varied presentation of Bryan’s film, photographic and publicist works from September 1939. Its main theme is the siege of Warsaw by the Germans in 1939, and, most importantly, the fate of the residents of the Polish capital, as seen by the American photographer. In addition to several hundred harrowing photographs, there are Bryan’s memoirs and accounts from his stay in Warsaw, as well as his fascinating reportage from another visit to Poland during the 20th anniversary of the Second World War. There is also the DVD attached which contains the famous film “Siege of Warsaw” from 1940, watched then by 80 millions of people. It was the first reportage depicting the atrocities and horror of the Second World War experienced by the residents of the bombed city.

Julien Bryan presented Warsaw as a completely different place. One can see bombs over hospitals, children born while bombings, firing at the church in Pelcowizna during Sunday Mass…Other pictures show death, bodies in pieces and a 12-year-old girl crying over her dead sister. The latter photograph became the symbol of September in Warsaw. The laboratory where Bryan developed his photos was hit by a missile. Fortunately enough, the films had been moved to another place. On September 21, when the members of the diplomatic corpus were leaving the Polish capital, Bryan hid the films in gas masks belonging to American diplomats.

The compilation of such extensive materials is supposed to show different contexts and perspectives of Bryan’s work. It also gives an opportunity to take a look at mutual relations between the literary and the visual ways of documenting history.