Adam Wilkoszarski explores the eerie abandonment at post-holiday Eastern European coastal towns

Adam Wilkoszarski’s series “After Season” hums with an eerie sense of abandonment but also a sense of calm before the storm. Rows of tables and chairs in a canteen sit devoid of bustling holiday crowds, an ice cream van’s shutters are found closed with no customers in sight, and a swimming pool lies expansive in its water drained emptiness. “The places I choose are anonymous and can evoke common emotions for all people living in our geographical region,” Adam tells It’s Nice That. Though primarily shot in Poland, Finland and Romania, the series focuses on coastal towns, once bustling with tourists, now, post-holiday season, abandoned by the crowds.

“I do not recall the exact moment in which I started this project,” Adam explains. “It must have been at the beginning of university studies – about 8 years ago. Coastal towns have always brought back warm memories of holidays that my parents and grandparents used to take me on when I was a child. Every year summer is my favorite time and I always miss it when it’s over,” he muses.

“I would like this project to resonate with the warm memories of recipients and act on their emotion,” Adam continues. “Each of us has personal experience with such places and because of that the reception can be varied. Resorts are often places that repel because of the crowds, but when they are empty they are completely changed.”

His images seem to project an endless cycle of these locations — once summer ends, shutters go down, swimming pools are drained, holiday cabins emptied. “It’s not just that some places do not change for decades, but also that the nature of this business forces owners to repeat preparations for a new season. Summer lasts only a few months each year, and when it’s finished, the spaces that I photograph become unnecessary,” Adam puts forward.

The photographs evoke a sense of a very human and intimate relationship with space and time, something that is important to Adam to explore. “It is a very large subject and only sometimes I feel that I am rubbing against a very important part of this issue for me,” he tells us. The project, though ongoing, has been momentarily put to one side, allowing Adam to create a sense of distance from it and undertake new projects inland, in Poland and Israel. That is, until perhaps, this cyclic pull to coastal towns and their post-habitation begins within him once more.