I found a cache of old photos I took in the mid-1990s of Polish arcade game parlors and repair places.pic.twitter.com/HLn0C3ScVn
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This collection is an overlapping sunset of two eras: the communist Poland that officially shut down just a few years prior, and the imperial era of arcade games.pic.twitter.com/MieDbfhkND
The two intersect in fascinating places: the rampant reusal of arcade cabinets, arcades clad in classic Soviet concrete and underneath first advertising billboards, antiquated notions of luxury.pic.twitter.com/5nV78wIGs5
There are also behind-the-scenes photos of the infrastructure powering all this – including my father, still alive, only a few years older than I am today.pic.twitter.com/1uAQVR3ych
All this, and him, is most likely why I do what I do today.
I took these photos for a PC game I was making that would put you in charge of a chain of arcade parlor. I never finished it. It’s funny how a game like this could probably be very popular today.pic.twitter.com/0TrhisuZzQ
Anyway. Is there a publication that one could imagine a photo essay including these? It might be interesting to write more about it. In the meantime, all the photos are here:https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/albums/72157703765422395 …
(I also found my notebooks where, in my last years before The Internet, I would write down and measure everything I possibly could about arcade games.)pic.twitter.com/OzeLmmzq9T
Oh my god!!! I just realized I still have that camera. Here it is, right next to the one I currently use. It must still be possible to get film for it, right? Could be fun to take it for a spin again.pic.twitter.com/EMkuVIeDxC
Extra personal context: I have few photos from my childhood; photography was rare and expensive. These 80 photos is by far the largest consistent visual archive I have of my life before moving away from Poland.
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