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| © Sputnik Photos, Agnieszka Rayss – U |
For almost ten years, the photo collective Sputnik
has focused on Post-Soviet countries, in search of personal stories
instead of ‘hot news issues’. The nine photographers of the collective
include winners of many awards, such as World Press Photos and Pictures
of the Year. Founding member Rafał Milach, along with his partner Ania Nałęcka,
who designs all of Sputnik’s books, were in Utrecht for the opening of
Sputnik’s exhibition at Fotodok, the first exhibition dedicated entirely
to the collective. They sat down with GUP to talk about Sputnik’s start, photo books as a slow medium and how they learned to work together as a couple.
Sputnik unofficially started in 2004 when Polish photographer Rafał
Milach (b. 1978) went to a workshop in France, where he met other
photographers from Eastern and Central Europe. “Funnily enough, we met
in France for the first time. Most of us were from Warsaw, but we didn’t
even know each other,” Rafał says while taking a break from building up
his exhibition at Fotodok. Sitting in the brightly lit office, he
sometimes gets up and runs over to take a book from the shelves, to
illustrate what he’s talking about. The participants from that workshop
in 2004 got along better than any of them could’ve expected, he says.
“It was mostly the energy that we felt," Rafał explains. "During the
workshop, we discussed methods and edits. And we hung out. We didn’t
even really work together that first time, but it was an intense and
important time for all of us. During one of those late night dinners,
while freely discussing ideas, it turned out that everybody was
passionate about working together. Someone proposed the name Sputnik.
That name is related with transmission and we wanted the collective to
be our personal broadcast, filling the gaps that mainstream media forget
about. Our main focus would be on Post-Soviet countries, where we all
come from. Even though we didn’t know each other yet, we felt this
energy between us. Sometimes you meet people and you know that you could
work with them. So we decided to give it a try.
