Mateusz Kowalik’s Devil’s Rib, winner of the second edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award, offers an impression of what it’s like to make a radical move: to leave everything behind and pursue a life away from modern society. Who are these people who have chosen an alternative lifestyle residing in one of the most remote areas of Poland? What made them decide to make home deep in the woods? Are they happier now than before? Kowalik’s book doesn’t offer straightforward answers to these questions. The images he makes—black and white photos vibrating with a pensive mood—are suggestive while remaining open for interpretation; an approach that is probably closest to the reality of the situation. There are no simple facts about this matter.
That said, the book includes quotes from individuals that Kowalik encountered, interrupting the sequence of visuals. These short texts articulate that building a self-sufficient way of life means different things to different people. Each person that the photographer met has their own motives, though they all seem to share a deeply-felt need to live away from a poisoned (or perhaps even poisonous) contemporary society.
The title of the book also hints at a need for decontamination, making reference to a species of plants commonly known as ‘cabbage thistle’ (cirsium oleraceum in Latin)—whose leaves slightly resemble human ribs. Because it has been associated with sorcery and magic, this plant species is also locally known as ‘Devil’s Rib.’ In Central European folk tales, it was already described as having protective properties; thistle broth baths could remove negative energies accumulated in the body. Metaphorically, it could be said that the ‘Devil’s Rib’ is thus a cure for the toxic urban experience.
Some of the people Kowalik meets have made a conscious decision to reside in improvised sheds—or commitment to their character—while others simply find themselves pushed out rather than resisting the economical demands of society. In whichever case, to leave everything behind and ground daily life in more basic terms, to pack up and make a move into the wild just like that, still has an allure. We can at least recognize that Romantic curiosity to survive, possibly even thrive, by stripping away all superfluous luxuries and living a plain, simple existence in radically-reduced conditions.
Who doesn’t wish to have a break, even if for a short while, in order to overcome the over-stretch of our everyday experience—its fast pace and its complexities? To reconnect with our primal feelings is not an uncommon desire. And yet, so many years after Henry David Thoreau made notes of his experiment to live remotely in the American wilderness as published in the influential mid-19th century novel Walden, one must remember that such an ‘escape’ remains an ideal that is not so easily copy-pasted into real life. As we discover from Kowalik’s Devil’s Rib, facing wilderness permanently is a decision only really chosen by a small minority.
Devil’s Rib
by Mateusz Kowalik
Publisher: Editorial RM
ISBN: 9788419233509