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Going on a Bummer Vacation

By Tomasz Lazar

The Polish coastline is about 500 km long. On it, there are several sandy beaches, some cliffs and a few villages that are now largely populated by depressed fishermen.

Poland was pretty happy when it was allowed to join the European Union, but ever since it's been in the EU big boys club, the welfare of the fishing families has got shittier and shittier. Many are forced to sell their boats and open new businesses, or go looking for work elsewhere, meaning that the only people left in the villages are destitute fishermen who don't have boats.

And what's a fisherman without a boat? Just a sad guy in a cap who smells faintly of the one thing that he wants most, but cannot have.

Photographer Tomasz Lazar, who was born in Szczecin, a town just 100 km from the Baltic Sea, sent us this set of photographs.

We're not usually big on artsy, black and white shots of gloomy things, but come on, this is Eastern Europe, people there are born seeing black and white.