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Professor spent 15 years photographing Poland

By Matt Neznanski
Greenlee Web Team

Dennis Chamberlin’s career as a freelance photographer in Poland recorded the rise and fall of that country’s Solidarity labor movement.

When the group came to power in the late 1980s, Chamberlin was there, and when Solidarity suffered defeat in 2001, he was preparing to return to the United States.

“When I was an undergraduate, the Solidarity movement in Poland was just beginning,” he said. “Photographically, what was coming out of the country was only people standing around with their fingers up in the air.”

Chamberlin’s experiences in Poland began right after his undergraduate studies in 1983. Armed with a 90-day student visa and a grant that only stipulated “a project overseas,” Chamberlin laid the groundwork for a freelance photojournalism career that lasted 15 years in that country.

After that first trip to Poland, Chamberlin returned to the United States and went to work as a staff photographer for the Denver Post.

But Poland’s charm kept calling Chamberlin back. This time, he decided, for good.

“After three years at the Post, I was going to quit,” he said. “My boss convinced me not to and got me a leave of absence instead.”

While abroad the second time, Chamberlin said he started to lay the groundwork to stay in the country and met Joan, his future wife. In January of 1987, he bought a one-way ticket to Poland.

As political changes there began to attract international attention, Chamberlin’s freelance photojournalism became a hot commodity. He worked regularly for newspapers and top periodicals including National Geographic, The Economist, Forbes, GEO, Libération, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, TIME, and New York Times Magazine.

In addition, Chamberlin was given a photo column in the weekly Tygodnik Gdanski, Solidarity newspaper.

“It was no money, I was earning 75 cents per photo while film cost $3 a roll,” he said.

But his work did earn Chamberlin membership in the Polish Art Photographers Union. He became the second foreigner to be inducted into the elite Polish artist organization in 1997.

When a Polish friend began a photography school in Sorpot, Poland, Chamberlin started teaching. Soon, he was involved in developing the school’s curriculum, shooting commercial projects on the side.

“The kind of work I liked doing was journalism. The kind of work I found myself doing to support a family was commercial,” he said. “The journalism was important, but the commercial was overwhelming the journalism.”

His work at the photography school got Chamberlin excited about teaching the two times each week he was in class, and he returned to Indiana where he found an MFA program that would blend his interests.

“It seemed like the right thing,” he said. “I could keep one foot in journalism and one foot in art.”

For more about Chamberlin, please read "Dennis Chamberlin, prize-winning photographer, now teaches at Greenlee School ."

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