Anna Domin: I followed your Instagram account, Cosmoderna, but I think I initially approached it as just a collection of photos, a catalog. I didn’t take a closer look at what you were really doing. And then I received your book, The Last Stay – Postcards from Holidays in the PRL, and… it took my breath away. In my mind, literally within seconds, a question appeared: What is this? An album, a novel, a joke, a short story, a document, or a guide? I tried to find the best reference in my head to categorize it somehow, but there was nothing that resembled your work. The book defies all categories; it is something completely new, fresh… Where did the idea for this form come from?

Marcin Wojdak: The starting point was my Instagram profile. I didn’t have a specific idea for it. I just wanted a space where I could share my photos and reflections orbiting around the architecture I was fascinated by. I really enjoy talking, interacting. At the same time, I also like creating stories, so I couldn’t imagine a situation where I would just stop at taking photos. And the photos themselves evoked such a wide range of emotions in me that I couldn’t contain them in just one form—like a reportage or an essay. That’s why the text is so varied—sometimes playful, sometimes serious, and other times completely abstract. Over the years, I’ve encountered many books describing post-war modernism—like academic studies on port architecture from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s—very hermetic texts with few photos. There was also Filip Springer’s Ill-Born—a great piece of reportage work—but I knew I couldn’t be so meticulous in my observations. There was also a book, Summer in the City by Ewelina Wakulewska, which is a series of classic Polish postcards arranged in sequence. No text—just form. But that wasn’t enough for me. That’s why I created my own, original concept.

You’ve managed to create an inextricable dialogue between image and word. A dialogue, and I should probably use the word “incredible” again, though perhaps for the sake of the readers, I should say “extraordinary.” You tell stories about specific places using facts, you describe exactly what you see and what you found, then you take us into hypothetical situations, conversations, anecdotes, and imaginary moments. Finally, you pose difficult questions and make the reader think.

My priority was not to bore the reader, but I also didn’t want to bore myself. Architecture isn’t a popular topic of conversation, nor is aesthetics and broadly understood cultural heritage. Talking about it in a classic narrative makes the topic even less approachable. That’s why I often smuggle serious content in disguise—in a less serious form. I had some observations, background, thoughts about the architecture itself, and inspiration in my head that I translated into fictional jokes, conversations that could have happened there. If I had to categorize The Last Stay, I’d probably place it in the essay section.

I think your book lies closer to the genre of a philosophical and architectural guide. You use an unusual form of language: spoken language. As a result, one gets the impression that they are hearing or listening to a real conversation. The reader becomes a bit of an eavesdropper.

I wanted this entire book to feel like an illustration of a meeting between friends who deal with this topic and visit such places. Let it be a normal conversation, the kind that goes on for half an evening, where you drift and move from one thread to another, sometimes without a clear punchline. We talk about the architecture of these places, and when we get tired of the topic, we move on—we reminisce a little, share anecdotes, reflections, or what annoys us at the moment. Well, it turned out to be a bit of an eclectic creation, which wasn’t exactly the intention, but in the end, I thought: Let it stay that way.

Besides, I didn’t feel competent enough to deal only with the subject of architectural history itself. Of course, I could have gained that knowledge to some extent, but it wasn’t exciting enough for me to stop at just that. The same was true for the sociological basis of leisure architecture. I looked through a few books, read a few articles, but I knew that I was only interested in narrow portions of the topic. The method of stitching together fragments of different themes resulted in a postmodern reflection that, in itself, makes us go beyond the framework. The convention changes during the story, with the use of literary language mixed with colloquial, and sometimes almost completely made-up words. The more I played with the form, the less bored I was while writing.

And what about the reader?

My intention was for all these stories to have a universal tone. Let it not be a collection of my memories and reports, but a catalog that stimulates reflection. I don’t have the expertise to say definitively why, for example, we aren’t able to care for the heritage of modernism, but I think I have enough experience and awareness to reflect on it. And to make hypotheses. One thing is certain—what happened after the transformations of 1989 left a permanent mark on the surrounding architecture. We perceived this economic and political change as something great, as something important. For you, probably, just like for me, the better, real world began with prosperity and freedom. But when I started touring these centers of post-war modernism, I realized that we lost something extremely valuable back then—focus on human needs, on qualitative urban planning and architecture. The foundation of these spaces was, in fact, relaxation, not profitability from one bed, one tourist, one square meter of building, or one hectare of land. For me, it’s this humanism of old architectural solutions that is something shocking and worth acknowledging.

It strikes me that in the context of a climate catastrophe, people often think of it as a problem of species extinction—animals, plants, etc. People don’t understand that we’re fighting for ourselves. In your photos, I see spaces that could be filled with life, laughter, and fun, but they are dead, empty, and only nature rules them… Did you look at these places in this context?

Nature is a secondary protagonist in almost all my photos. It’s fascinating how quickly it rebuilds in places that people abandon. It’s also a very optimistic conclusion and fully in line with what you mentioned—the Earth will survive the troubles we’re causing it, but we might not make it. So it’s about maintaining a comfortable status quo, which we’re currently struggling with. And the absence of people in my photos is due to a very prosaic reason—I visited most of these places just before or just after the season. In July or August, there are such crowds that the architecture is lost in the thicket of grilling families, cars parked right under the houses, and hundreds of kitschy stalls. And I wanted the holiday centers to play the leading role.