Photo Gallery from Fish Smoking.

This is a selection of stills from the fish smoking process. Naturally they feature Jan Levandowska doing one of the many things he knows a lot about. If you like the idea of the natural, if you like the idea of the old ways of living, if your heart sinks at the thought of a new supermarket being built then you will be able to smell the woodsmoke in these pictures. 

Jan had gone and bought the fish from a fish farm, trout and eels fresh as it is possible to be. He brought them home and began the process that leads to smoking. Gutting, descaling and then soaking overnight in salt water and a combination of herbs and natural additions. If it wasn't for the fact this preparation was for so many guests at his daughter's wedding, I am sure we would have gone fishing first! 

When you are preparing your own food in the back woodlands of Poland, when you are with friends and re-enacting scenes that have gone on for hundreds of years, even the fact that you cannot speak their language is not a barrier to the shared experience. As a city man, born and bred in London, I feel a sense of privilage standing by Jan amongst the wood and smoke of the moment. Their is something profound in the identity of such times. I have been with Indigenous Australians walking in the bush, I have been in sweat lodge with Native Americans in their mountains and I have seen the caves of Lascaux (14th April 1996 une visite exceptionale) and all of these moments and others share an idea of connection that reaches beyond the culture of my own identity. In that cross cultural transmission the mechanism by which we are communicating is in our shared sense of humanity, our mutual understanding of values and the simple love of doing something which is in no way synthetic. Perhaps more contentiously in our globalised modern world there is the role of man the hunter and provider. As much as there may be complaints about the redundancy or inappropriateness of recalling our past, perhaps claims of misogyny or labels of Neaderthal, I, as a man, have to recognise the call of the fire, the stimulating smell of woodsmoke and the feeling of completion there is in performing the role of provider. Humanity has been shuffling around since Lucy four million years ago. Over the last 150, 000 years we established the identity we have today. For 99.9% of that time scale men have been hunters and so it is no surprise that somewhere inside most (not all) men the hunter can be called on and brought to the surface once again. Those voices against the hunting instinct fail mostly because they cannot connect with the history of male culture and lack the perception to sense our pack predator nature. Personally I have questions for anyone who conducts hunting as a sport, let's be clear on that; the position of "I kill for fun" is contentious. But the need to hunt your food may not just be about survival, it may also be something about our nature. And the skills of the fathers are passed to the sons. So whose history is it that we have on these pages? There are images of a moment in time but they were taken by one person recording the activity of another. On these pages the text is by a person from a culture of place, a culture of time and social culture all of which are different to those cultures possessed by the person in the images. In this case would it be accurate to say that the voice of the apparent subject, Jan Levadowska, is missing and therefore this page is certainly not his history? Whatever you think, however you perceive, the art of the historian is to ask questions of every aspect of evidence. If you are reading a newspaper then whose view is it that is presented as fact? If you are watching the television then whose ideas are actually seeping into your consciousness and if you are buying goods on that supermarket shelf then why and what prompts you to do so? The real question has to be, "Are you a passive viewer or are you are responsive actor in the play of life?" With video there is at least a chance to see something of someone else but even then, even if the footage is unedited, you are seeing with the camera person's eye.