Nowa Huta

The Orwellian settlement of Nowa Huta is one of only two entirely pre-planned socialist realist cities ever built and one of the finest examples of deliberate social engineering in the world. Funded by the Soviet Union in an attempt to create an in-your-face proletarian opponent to intellectual artsy-fartsy fairytale Kraków. In October 2017 I spent four days from early morning to afternoon wondering around Nowa Huta camera in hand in search of mundane glimmerings of the present and disregarded signs of a dystopian past.