In 1968, Polish photographer Zbyszko Siemaszko took a now-iconic photograph showing a barefoot girl running down a street in the gray rain. Siemaszko documented Warsaw, where he had moved after the end of World War II, and portrayed it as a modern and stylish city in the 1950s and 1960s. Time and again, he photographed passersby in everyday street scenes, such as in the image of the girl running in the rain.
The photograph itself captivates viewers because it shows the young woman walking barefoot from behind in the pouring summer rain. Hardly anyone is carrying an umbrella or any other form of rain protection, suggesting a sudden downpour that caught passersby by surprise. The fact that the girl isn’t wearing shoes adds to the fascination and sparks the imagination. Who are these people? Where were they headed? Why was she walking barefoot? No one seems to be paying her any attention, as if walking barefoot were perfectly normal. Only the photographer noticed her and reacted quickly.
It’s no wonder that, nearly 60 years after it was taken, the photo still captivates us. Proof of this can be seen in the ways the image has been edited and recreated. These include colorized versions like the one above, recreations under similar circumstances and featuring the same cars, as well as videos created in the age of artificial intelligence.
Polish AI artist Maciej Dobrodziej fed this image into Seedance 2.5 and created a complex prompt with the camera path and settings to bring it to life. The result transforms a frozen moment into a vivid scene that we can experience anew sixty years later, playing with our memories and imagination.
Note: I hadn’t seen this photo before, and I’m glad I discovered it and the photographer.
Update: I’ve now received some more details about this photo:
Ms. Grażyna commented on the photo by Zbyszek Siemaszko and wrote:
„That’s me.“
She had never seen this photo before.
I brought Łukasz a photo of myself wearing the same red dress as I had back then. Then I agreed with Dad that we would bring some strawberries. We arranged to meet at the Moskau movie theater.
Siemaszko’s photo is black and white, but it is known that 13-year-old Grażynka was wearing a red linen dress with cream-colored stripes at the time. No one else had a dress like hers. Her grandmother had sewn the dress from scraps of fabric she had left over. At first, she ran in sandals, but when water from puddles began to seep into them, she picked up her shoes.
So, at least as far as the girl was concerned, the picture looked more like this:
Source: TVN 24