Around 1925 in a Polish studio Memories from Miedzyrzec was born, when the solemn expressions of two identically clad sisters were recorded for posterity. When the photographer released the shutter, the future was unimaginable to these delicate souls. Once the negative was developed, printed, and mounted on cardstock, Mania and Blima practiced their penmanship on the backside. Their childhood signatures are still visible today.
How this family picture survived World War Two to be returned to their mother’s hands - considering her flight from Poland at the heels of the Nazis and subsequent Soviet imprisonment - is a mystery. “It was only after my mother and grandmother had both passed away,” Mania’s daughter said, “that I discovered these photographic treasures memorializing their lives, before the war.”
In Bella’s Bliss a Polish mother lovingly holds her baby. A snowflake of lace caresses the two, and the color palette is soft and gray. In Mania and Blima the color palette shifts. The sisters are enveloped in the folds of a brown fur coat shadowing the darkness about to suffocate Europe and rob Blima of her short life.