ILONA KARWINSKA
(MA, Goldsmiths College, London)

In December 2005, London based photographer Ilona Karwinska returned to her homeland to spend more than 3 years photographing and recording the gradual demise of some of Warsaw’s most fascinating and original architectural features - its NEON SIGNS.

During this pioneering documentary project, she discovered and helped to save some of these iconic landmarks from destruction, in particular the gift shop neon BERLIN, and one of the oldest cinema neons KINO PRAHA. This photographic journey culminated in the publication of the book ‘Warsaw - Polish Neon’ in December 2008.

More recently, Ilona Karwinska has just completed a tour of Poland’s other major cities in search of their neon and architectural heritage. Taking her from Wroclaw to Bialystok, Szczecin to Katowice, among many other former neon cities. Her images of these rare signs will appear in a second Polish Neon album in the Autumn of 2010.

NEONS OF WARSAW

The city of Warsaw had its first neon sign in 1929. Here, for the first time in Europe a ‘Pavement Neon’ was installed. These early signs were made to order - free in design, shape and colour, and influenced other forms of advertising such as poster design and typography.

However, as the city of Warsaw was completely destroyed and subsequently rebuilt after the Second World War, its new ‘Socialist Realism’ Communist regime took a more ‘controlled’ interest in the medium of neon. Neons returned to the streets of Poland after 1956 when the Ministry of Interior Trade created Reklama - a state-run company for advertising services which monopolised exterior advertising throughout Poland.

Polish Neons were noted for their outstanding technical and artistic qualities as well as being sympathetically placed within the urban landscape. No wonder, they were designed and built by prominent architects, graphic designers and artists, and overseen by a chief Graphic Designer whose job it was to approve all new signs before their implementation. This complex and lengthy bureaucratic process meant it would often take 2-3 years to finalise any given project. Despite this, every month many new neon signs appeared, and during its peak Reklama maintained over 1,000 neon signs.

The Director of Reklama recalls that every week the company reported to state officials - “On one occasion, they ordered us to neonize the entire length of Pulawska Street, one of the longest streets in Warsaw. We then purchased 12,000 metres of neon tubes for the job”. With their intense interest in neon signs, the state officials would regularly request the engineers at Reklama to drive them around the city checking the condition of all the signs, and planning new ones. Reklama is now a privately run business and is still providing neon signs, graphics and advertising services in the new Polish Republic.

The neon signs from that era were certainly grand in size and bold in design. Their playfulness and folly stood out in the otherwise dark and oppressed Poland. Most of the neons are now gone, too expensive to maintain, too fragile, rejected and forgotten, belonging to no one. All that remains are the ghostly weathered ‘shadows’ on the façades of the buildings they once adorned.