Ela Polkowska: Splinter [signed]

Winner of the Swedish Photo Book Award 2025

A harsch and colourful journey through the lense of photographer Ela Polkowska.

From the publisher:
Splinter is a photographic book about people living in constant disorder, understood both literally and metaphorically, and about the feeling of uneasiness that their lives provoked.

The story took place in a house that had turned into a kind of warehouse - a space packed with things, whether working or not. It seemed that the constant change gave meaning to that reality. Yet its inhabitants apparently refused to accept that only order is legitimate in today’s world.

Pictures documenting the house were taken in the course of a year. What had been changing during this time was not only the place being in the state of a perpetual transformation but also the feelings accompanying the process of documenting this world. A belief that everyone can live however they want, even in a completely disorganized space was followed by anxiety that this visual and material chaos would lead to a catastrophe. And yet both turned out to be real.