deutsche Textversion →

Poland
The Mud Spa Therapy

Every year in August it's time to pack your tent and move to Kostrzyn in Poland to meet all the other 750.000 crazy people at the Poland's "Woodstock Festival". It might be the only time of the year where you can just be yourself. In case love, sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll are too exhausting for you, just jump into the big mud hole spa right beside the main stage. 

Shooting Location: Kostryzn nad Odra, Poland
Coordinates: 52°36'40.5"N 14°40'05.5"E
Thanks to: Nils Hasenau

It was a very spontaneous action on a Friday morning in August 2013 which began with a call to my friend and photography colleague Nils Hasenau. I told him that years before I had attended the Woodstock Festival and that we could definitely take some great photos there. The festival was for free and only 90 minutes drive by car from Berlin. No sooner said than done! So shortly afterwards we sat in the car with our photo equipment and a cooler box of fizzy drinks on the way to the German-Polish border.

When we reached the festival grounds we immediately saw that we had come across a photographic goldmine. The festival folk were in high spirits and most were open to any camera lens. And so we cheerfully walked around the festival, although we felt we were on some big game safari.

We observed the gathering of thousands of examples of a motley species. They were on the move in a chaotic kind of way, but yet we could recognise the basic form of an organisational structure. Most specimens were conscious, other representatives of the species were in a deep sleep, although some sleeping positions did look peculiar. Anyway, we concluded that there were diurnal and nocturnal creatures here. However most of the diurnal representatives stood attentively in front of a stage. A few performed movements that zoologists describe as “going wild”.

Furthermore the range of movements was incredibly wide. Alone in the category “purposeful movement” we could recognise a number of variations: creeping and crawling on up to four limbs was just as common as the upright gait, although a large percentage of the upright walkers were not fully developed. Staggering, spinning and falling were often intrinsic to these specimens movements. We could also register considerable deficits in their cognitive abilities.

Particularly striking with this species was their special compulsion for water, abundantly available at the feeding sites but also provided in the form of water fountains and paddling pools. And it was often not the food intake, but the species own amusement in dealing with the element water that had priority.

We later discovered a variation of this need close to the main stage: the basis here was the mixture of stagnant water and earth, in which the festival youngers wallowed but sometimes also performed complex, acrobatic performances. In this mud field the species also conducted competitions and exercises with military countenance or enjoyed mutual touching with intense caresses. In particular this ambivalence between militancy and tenderness, stimulated by the mud, greatly impressed us.

We had actually contemplated staying deep into the night, but when the sun ran out of steam so did we.

It goes without saying that in such a festival environment one cannot be grateful enough for the many photos. This is why I combine the publishing of a selection of the aforementioned photos with the hope and the plea to the UN for the protection and preservation of this species, who at this location reached an evolutionary stage where they truly lived out the joy of lif