Stop to snap the roses: a political science semester through analogue photography
It is a story about how shooting film with old-school gear can help provide better guidance through the labyrinth of European nation-states’ difficult past and their still challenging present
Co-written with Hannah Wines, a former student of Miłosz
Hannah:
I did not expect analogue photography to be a defining component of my semester studying European Union politics. Yet, looking through the rolls of film that my core course took together, there are three photos that sum up the Fall of 2022. The first, taken in a classroom in Copenhagen, is from the first day of Core Course Week. It was taken by another student in the class as our professor, Miłosz, taught us how to adjust each of the camera’s settings for our upcoming trip to Germany. The photos we took this day were shaky and out of focus, but they instantly remind me of how new everything felt in September: we were all blurry to one another when we were first sorted into our groups, but just one or two adjustments away from becoming close friends.
We had only just scratched the surface of our time learning about the European Union. Most of the course had been textbook readings and class discussions on international relations theory, and we hadn’t yet brought that knowledge out of the classroom. Exploring Copenhagen with the cameras that day was the first time I’d gotten to really talk to some of the people that I now know as my passionate and intelligent friends, and I love that we had the chance to record these early moments.
The second photo that caught my attention was one I took on our trip to Knivsbjerg in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Denmark. The motto “jungs holt fast,” inscribed above a plaque dedicated to Danish resistance leaders in WWII, is wrapped up in a complicated and fascinating regional history that I never knew until visiting. Part of what made Core Course Week so special was our ability to humanise history; in this case, the Schleswig-Holstein War wasn’t just a series of events on a timeline, but rather a years-long conflict that reconfigured the identities of an entire region for generations.
Knivsbjerg is a mix of hundreds of years of history: what began as a German memorial to Otto Von Bismarck and a war from the 1860s is now a controversial memorial to ethnically German soldiers from Denmark who volunteered in WWII. Using a phrase which once encouraged German soldiers to conquer Denmark, it now encourages modern-day youth to continue the spirit of Danish resistance fighters. Speaking with Danish teenagers from Schleswig-Holstein revealed that asking a Dane living in Northern Germany if they feel more Danish or German is “a stupid question” simply because it is unanswerable.
Photographing Southern Denmark and Northern Germany put names and faces to our textbook knowledge. On the scavenger hunt, we photographed EU flags on the same street as merchant homes that dated back to the Hanseatic League, when major European city-states first formed economic alliances. We walked under plaques with the Hanseatic crest and squeezed our way through winding streets full of Hanseatic license plates. Lübeck’s economic history — the economic history of Europe and the EU, for that matter — was clearly part of the local identity. Touring a Danish high school in Flensburg, Germany, gave us the chance to see how the borders drawn in 1864 and 1920 still complicate the daily lives of millions of people. Our entire course up to that point had focused on how controversial European Integration had been and being sent out on our own to discover both the beneficial and deadly attempts at integration prior to the EU made the stories more tangible.
Using a Cold War-time camera helped ground our otherwise theoretical knowledge. As a history major, it was fascinating to use a camera made during such a turbulent time; the East German prisoners who manufactured the camera wouldn’t have had a way to predict the world that I photographed through the very same lens. The was no way to know that I’d one day take it to a unified and democratic Germany or take a photo of my Danish family and friends at their first Thanksgiving meal. It was a charged experience to know that the camera was made under harmful circumstances, but it made each photo more purposeful; each time the shutter clicked, a part of me had to consider the legacy of my subject or the message I’d convey.
Seeing how intense these conflicts were in regions as small as Schleswig-Holstein put the larger European integration process into perspective: if debate could turn deadly between thousands of people, it could certainly be fierce between millions. Whether in a moment exploring Antwerp with friends or a class trip to see part of the Berlin Wall, taking these analogue photos let me (quite literally) see each experience through a new lens. History was now both a narrator and a physical presence that I could hold in my hand.
Another photo that stuck out to me was one I took of my scavenger hunt group in Sønderborg, Denmark. We’d arrived in Sønderborg a day after our trip to Germany, where we’d split into groups to take on a scavenger hunt that took us all over the city of Lübeck. The goal of our time in Germany was to let us explore EU history with a creative outlet rather than another museum visit. We spent our time decoding clues and racing to beat our classmates to find historic sites.
I love this photo from Sønderborg because it perfectly echoes the one I’d taken of my group only days earlier: the same people, just in focus this time. Our day in Sønderborg was full of good food, interesting dinner conversations with local students, and independent exploration with newfound friends. Lübeck had mostly been a chance to photograph landscapes, but using the camera recreationally let me realise that I enjoyed the photos I took of my classmates even more. After two trips abroad, five class bonding events, and countless coffee runs, my photography this semester was defined by the people I got to do it with.
After our study tour was over, I had the privilege of taking the camera with me on my other travels throughout Europe. This included our class trip to Brussels about a month later. Taking the camera to Brussels was mostly an experience of what I didn’t photograph: EU security wouldn’t have been thrilled if I’d taken a picture inside a board room at the External Action Service, where we discussed the future of EU integration in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and I didn’t particularly want to photograph the architecture of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (which was built to praise Belgium’s colonial experience).
My photography continued on my host sister’s birthday trip to Odense, a Thanksgiving excursion to Paris with friends, and all around my neighborhoods in Roskilde and Copenhagen. “The Soviet Camera,” as my friends quickly dubbed it, was fixed to my hip at every special event of the semester. It was a running gag that I took so long to focus the camera for each photograph, but that’s part of what made it so special: setting the focus and the aperture made me sit longer with each experience. What’s more, the camera made me search out small details that I might have missed otherwise. Every crack in a statue in Brussels or ornate carving on a wall in Odense was the possible subject of a photo, and therefore an opportunity to absorb the current moment in a semester full of sweeping change.
I’m now back home, writing this as I wait for my photos to develop at a store in Washington, DC. I can’t recall every hasty photo I snapped. I’m sure there are parts of these transformative four months that I’ll forget. But I can’t wait to get the film back, and to hold in my hand a new part of history that I got to write: the history, culture, experiences and people that I stopped to capture forever.
Miłosz:
The idea to experiment with analogue cameras as part of a political studies course came to me during first months of my stay in Denmark. I just quit my diplomatic career to join my future wife. At that time, I was only doing some freelance analytical projects and had a lot of time to bike around Copenhagen and do more distant trips around Denmark with my Contax 167 MT. Shooting film helped me settle in.
It was then when an opportunity to lecture for DIS Study Abroad arose. I quickly discovered that DIS not only allowed but even encouraged unusual teaching methods. As I still had a pair of old Prakticas, I thought it would make sense to talk about the history of European integration, the Cold War division of the continent and breakthrough events of 1989–1991 through the lens of East German analogue cameras. It had a symbolic dimension, too, as some of them were built by political prisoners.
I decided to incorporate analogue photography into a course about European integration. I did not know if there would be any interest in shooting film among my students. To my relief, the idea met with enthusiasm of some and understanding of others. We did a quick workshop to explain the basics of operating the cameras (loading/unloading the film, exposure triangle, focusing etc.) before going to southern Denmark and northern Germany for our first research trip. I felt enormous joy and satisfaction every time a student asked me for an additional roll of film.
I want to think that using purely mechanical Prakticas has helped my students slow down and immerse themselves into the reality of European history and contemporariness, full of complicated alliances, multiple wars, and unexpected turns of events. It was also a way of encouraging the class to take a look at their surroundings. We travelled to places where medieval architecture co-existed with more modern building, entering a fascinating dialogue about European cultural heritage. Grasping is never an easy exercise, especially for people coming from outside of Europe. When one must stop, take out the camera, find an appealing frame (all cameras had prime lenses only), adjust all settings, cock the shutter press the release button, one’s photographic experience becomes significantly different from shooting with a smartphone.
Did the experiment work? After trying it for a few semesters, I have decided to make the use of cameras voluntary for those who really want it during the spring and autumn semesters. There are always a few students either already having some experience with analogue photography or willing to give it a try. We then meet a few times during the semester to talk about the their endeavours and the value film photography has brought to their stay in Denmark and Europe.
I have moved all film-related obligatory tasks to intense summer courses I started teaching last year as they are even more exploration-oriented and give the students more opportunities to use Copenhagen and our study tour destinations as a photographic playground. For me as an amateur photographer with some 20 years of experience, it is also a way of finding fresh perspectives: my students deliver unexpected, spontaneous framing and constantly infect me pure joy of using a tool that many thought is dead.
Hannah Wines holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from American University in Washington, DC, which she completed in 2022. She spent her final semester in Denmark studying European integration and International Humanitarian Law. When she isn’t studying for the LSAT, Hannah funds her world travels by selling books at Barnes & Noble.
Miłosz J. Cordes is Lecturer at DIS Study Abroad and a former Polish diplomat. He does policy analysis for European research institutions and think-tanks, including the Danish Institute of International Studies and the Casimir Pułaski Foundation. He majors in Russian Studies and in security in the Baltic Sea Region. You can find some of his photos here and here.
Note: Hannah provided all photos used in this article. Miłosz developed, scanned and edited all B&W photos.
