Photo of the week: glimpse inside a Polish resort in off-season

Our photo of the week was taken by Adam Wilkoszarski at Jeziorsko Lake in central Poland — a man-made reservoir built in the 1980s to prevent flooding which later turned into a summer resort.

During the height of summer the resort offers camping and water sports. Wilkoszarski, who is based in Poznań, visited Jeziorsko Lake’s Rafa (“Reef”) resort before summer was in full swing, continuing a larger body of work documenting holiday spots in off-season.

Though this photo was taken out of the holiday season, it reflects the wider story of the resort which Wilkoszarski discovered to not be as succesful as first anticipated.

“There were big hopes for it to become a summer holiday resort but it never happened. Rafa resort is the only working place there. There are some signs of holiday infrastructure there that went out of business like ice cream shops or pedalo rental,” he says.

Local tourism is suffering around Poland with many vacationers choosing to escape to the mountains or the sea, if not abroad. Discussing Rafa, the photographer reveals: “As is the case of the majority of such resorts, it’s never crowded. There are hundreds places like this in Poland,” he says, adding that the lake’s location “in the middle of nowhere” doesn’t help.