The First March of Gentlemen

A fictitious narration composed of authentic stories, Rafał Milach's The First March of Gentlemen collages 1950s photographs of the townspeople of Września into bright constructivist tableaux that weigh protest against the mechanisms of discipline.

The source material — portraits by local photographer Ryszard Szczepaniak of communist-era Września — is cut loose and marshaled across fields of red and blue, echoing the town's history as the site of the celebrated early twentieth-century children's strikes. Across 72 pages with 48 illustrations, designed by Milach with Ania Nałęcka-Milach, the figures assemble, march, and disperse like players in a drill the book never quite names. First published in 2017 by Muzeum Dzieci Wrzesińskich / OUT OF PRINT this record follows the GOST Books second edition of 2018.

Milach (b. 1978), a member of Magnum Photos and co-founder of the Archive of Public Protests, has built a body of work on power, propaganda, and civic resistance in Central and Eastern Europe, including 7 Rooms and The Winners The First March of Gentlemen distills those concerns into the collage book at its most pointed.