Mark Cottle: Photography

1989/90: the former communist regime was handing over to a new government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and the word "Solidarity" was everywhere. I took these pictues of Mazowiecki and Lech Walesa in January 1990 at a conference at the Gdansk shipyards. It was Mazowiecki's first visit to the shipyards since taking part in protests there as a dissident ten years before. And whatever your view of Walesa and his later performance as president, he was 'The Man' in 1990; when he spoke people listened.