I first arrived in Warsaw eleven years after this photo was taken. The focus of the shot is the Palac Kultury i Nauki (“The Palace of Culture and Science”), a building that was a “gift” from Joseph Stalin in the 1950s when Poland was, for all intents and purposes, under the rule of the Soviet Union in general and Stalin in particular. The story goes that Stalin gave the Poles a choice of a subway system or the Palace: the Poles chose the subway; Stalin gave them the Palace. Whatever the case, the Palace is a controversial building: many Poles feel it is a constant, painful reminder of an incredibly painful period of Polish history when its independence was in name only and should be demolished. Others feel it is a building of historic although painful importance and should be preserved.

The Palace appears in Polish culture in many contexts, including film. During our family’s 2017 visit to Warsaw, I took the opportunity to pose like one of the characters does in that very location in Mis (“Teddy Bear”), my very favorite Polish film.

When I first arrived in Poland, though, the Palace was an exotic building representing everything I knew about Soviet/Stalinist Social Realist architecture: imposing, faux-Classical, domineering. It was the epitome of what made Poland feel different.

The two buildings on the left of the frame were completed in 1989 and house, among other things, the first Marriott in Warsaw. It also housed an English-language bookstore — one of the best reasons to make the trip from the southern border where I lived all the way to Warsaw, a trip of nine hours total and including two buses and a train.