Wooden Anniversary depicts a personal story of the fifth year of marriage for a couple. In many ways, it’s something of a diary, showing landscapes, details from within the home and surrounding environment, and portraits of the pregnant wife. Photographer Filip Zawada lets us know his intention is to convey the reality of marriage, freed from the Disney illusion: the true day-to-day of laundry and forgotten dinners. To this extent, he does capture the details of modern living, like the ubiquitous little white plant pots from Ikea or whatever chain, glimpses of nudity from a shared abode, a half-full salt-shaker with the contents slanted from use, condensation on a window separated the viewer from the snowy outdoor world.

What is perhaps the most striking aspect this work is the absence of the husband, the photographer, both visually and emotionally. Looking through the images, I kept asking myself how this project would be different, if it were a study of a single mother. There is tenderness in the portrayal of his wife, yet it’s full of distance. She never smiles. She’s always turning away, looking away, obstructed by objects separating her from us, separating her from her husband. Are they so unhappy? Is the title a double entendre for their wooden emotional life?

The child is born, and there’s a beautiful portrait of mother holding child in the daylight of a small, cramped apartment. Yet, once again, the wife faces away.

Zawada is correct that life, and marriage, is not a Disney movie – yet, his rendering overtly omits that which we all know it has: levity and laughter, frivolity and playfulness. It’s open to interpretation if those things are missing from the marriage, or missing from the book. In any case, the work shows some lovely photography, along with some very conflicted emotions.

Wooden Anniversary is available for sale from publisher OPT (the Center of Creative Attitudes), currently only in Polish.

Reviewed by Katherine Oktober Matthews.