Karczeby is a book about the soil, the ground of Poland, about a peasant's life; a life, a world that seems to remain frozen in the 1950s or the 1960s.

The word Karczeby - that means "stump" – designates people who are rooted to their land physically, who cannot leave it, regardless of the hardships of the life in the countryside of this remote region of Poland, and even if a choice, an opportunity to go live and work somewhere else may have crossed their path.

With little means, but with elaborate staging and image construction, Adam Pańczuk offers us a gallery of portraits that are both gentle and powerful. The characters, photographed in their fields, in their landscape, with for sole props either family objects or elements from pagan rites, take us to another dimension, in another state of being…

The beautiful text by Kazimierz Kusznierow creates a dialogue with the images, unveils and reveals part of that other state of being; and then there is the central pages that are sealed, where the images taken in a mock-up theatre certainly provide another key to this story !

The book is also a beautiful object, with a great and simple layout, and a high-end quality of printing.

Adam Panczuk is a member of the Sputnik Photos collective.