Catalogue Police the police

“Miliţia e cu noi!” (1981)
C-type print, variable dimensions,
courtesy of the artist
During the events of December 1989, demonstrators came up with slogans which, shouted in the streets, were meant to welcome
and calm down the “enemy” and determine him to pass on the side of the revolutionaries. Based on gallery practice in football,
these exhortations would galvanize the crowd, leaving it speechless.
“The army is with us” was shouted to those who had been brought for retaliation, when the balance was not turned yet in people’s
favour. The slogan was a success and was further applied to several groups (of authorities). I don’t remember if the former communist
police was among them – the “popular militia”, as it was initially called – instrument of control and intimidation of the communist
authorities inspired by the Soviet model and applied to all Eastern European socialist countries; but it might have been.
I remembered these things while looking at some images from the beginning of the ‘80s, when I had enthusiastically taken up
photography.
At that time, I was very interested in people who were “doing things”, in everything that could document “an action”. On Sundays,
people used to go out for a walk in Bucharest parks and have as much fun as they could at that time: the adults felt free as children,
“amusing themselves” in swings and carousels, boating on the lake, or even carting. Even back when the totalitarian regime
tightened its pressure and life became harder – with deprivation, restrictions and control –, people could find moments of leisure,
by simply forgetting they were living in Eastern Europe, in the “socialist camp”, in Ceauşescu’s Romania …
This is how they were enjoying themselves together, those under control and those who represented the state authority, ordinary
people and those in uniform, civilians and the “militia”. In the spinning carousel they are all on the same position and their faces
are diffuse; only the camera set on an adequate exposure time can distinguish and individualize them. Due to the fact that the police
and army uniforms were identical, distinguishable only by colour, the monochrome image doesn’t offer sufficient information
to identify the institution these soldiers served. The current viewer can no longer say whether the characters in the pictures are
non-commissioned army officers in khaki, or the “militia”, in its distinctive blue, but this detail is insignificant: both were among us
and, somehow, they were “with us”. The phrase is ambiguous because it designates things and people who are both on our side,
but also among us with no specific purpose. As a matter of fact, this is what the camera actually caught: those army officers who
were rather during service time, joined the crowd in the park, like any other entertainment consumer.
Excitement and authoritarianism! – seems to be a title that emerges from this pictured Sunday story of the ‘70s Bucharest. Had we
known then the slogan from 1989, we could have simply entitled them: “The Militia is with us”.
Teodor Graur, February 2010
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