Beyond the street, through a gateway or at the turn of a staircase, a small shrine waits. Sometimes it stands in the centre of a courtyard; sometimes it occupies a recess so modest that a stranger might pass without noticing. Many took shape during the German occupation and the Warsaw Uprising, when people gathered close to home to pray, to wait, and to hope that those they loved would return.
These photographs follow the shrines that remain among Warsaw’s surviving old buildings. Some are still tended; others are slowly weathering away. The names of those who built them, and much of what happened around them, have been lost. Yet their presence makes the courtyards feel inhabited across time. Beside an ordinary doorway, beneath the windows of someone’s home, there is still a place set aside for grief, gratitude, or a hope too private to put into words.
12 photographs