Milach's books include 7 Rooms (2011), In the Car with R (2012), Black Sea of Concrete (2013), The Winners (2014) and The First March of Gentlemen (2017). He is a co-founder of the Sputnik Photos collective.[5]
With ten other Central Eastern European photographers, he co-founded Sputnik Photos, a collective documenting transition in
post-Soviet states.[4][11]
For his first book, 7 Rooms (2011), Milach accompanied and photographed seven young people for several years living in the Russian cities of
Moscow,
Yekaterinburg and
Krasnoyarsk.[12]
In the Car with R (2012) was made on a 10-day road trip, driving 1450 kilometres around
Iceland's circular
Route 1. Milach made photographs and his local guide, the writer
Huldar Breiðfjörð [
de], made diary entries.[13]
Black Sea of Concrete (2013) is about the Ukrainian
Black Sea coast, about its people, of whom he made portraits, and the abundant Soviet-era geometric blocks strewn along the coastline.[4][14]
Milach spent two years in
Belarus from 2011 exploring its dire economic and political situation.[5] Belarus is "a country caught between the ultra-traditional values of an older Soviet era and the viral influence of western popular culture."[4] Milach was interested in the clean, tidy glamorous facade maintained by the state. His book The Winners (2014), portraits of winners of various "Best of Belarus" state and local contests promoted by the government, is a typology of state propaganda.[15][16][17] It depicts mostly people, but also anonymous interiors that had won awards. The obscure official prizes are intended to foster national pride but to an outside audience might appear tragicomic.[4] Milach travelled around the country working in the role of "an old-fashioned propaganda photographer".[4] He was guided by the authorities as to who, where and how to photograph, a process which only improved his revealing the ideology of the state.[5][4] Milach has said "the winners are everywhere, but the winnings are not for the winners – they are for the system", "the state is not interested in individuals, only in mass control."[4]
The First March of Gentlemen (2017) was made on a 2016 residency at Kolekcja Września to make work about life in
Września.[18] The town is synonymous with the
Września children strike, the protests of Polish children and their parents against Germanization that occurred between 1901 and 1904. In 2016, there were many demonstrations by
Citizens of Poland, a civic movement engaged in pro-democracy and anti-fascist actions, opposed to the political changes brought about by the government led by the
Law and Justice (PiS) party. Milach's book of collages mixes illustrations of the children strike with characters that lived in Września during the communist era in the 1950s and 1960s taken by local amateur photographer Ryszard Szczepaniak.[18] This "delineates a fictitious narrative that can be read as a metaphor, commenting on the social and political tensions of the present day."[18]
The First March of Gentlemen. Collages and photographs by Milach, archival images by Ryszard Szczepaniak, text by
Maciej Pisuk [
Wikidata], Milach, and Karol Szymkowiak.
Nearly Every Rose On The Barriers In Front Of The Parliament. Warsaw: Jednostka Gallery, 2018. Polish-language edition;
ISBN978-83-949273-1-8; edition of 300 copies. English-language edition;
ISBN978-83-949273-2-5; edition of 200 copies.[25][26][27]
In the Car with R: 29 Notes on Photography, Iceland and More. Gliwice: Museum in Gliwice, 2011.
ISBN978-83-89856-40-1.[n 1] "Project manager: Maga Sokalska / Czytelnia Sztuki". Photographs by Milach, text (an English translation of Með R í bílnum) by
Huldar Breiðfjörð [
de]. Edition of 450 copies.
W samochodzie z R.: 29 uwag o fotografii, Islandii i nie tylko. Gliwice: Muzeum w Gliwicach, 2011.
ISBN978-83-89856-40-1.[n 1] Photographs by Milach, text (a Polish translation of Með R í bílnum) by Huldar Breiðfjörð. Edition of 250 copies.
Publications with contributions by Milach
At the Border. [Warsaw]: Sputnik Photos, 2008.
ISBN978-83-927485-0-2. Photographs by Andrej Balco, Jan Brykczyński,
Manca Juvan [
Wikidata],
Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Milach, Domen Pal, Agnieszka Rayss and
Filip Singer [
Wikidata]; texts in English. The untitled preface says that the book "describes the illegal labour markets in the new member states of the European Union (Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia)." Milach contributes an essay, "Linh in Poland", about a Vietnamese man working at
Jarmark Europa.
U. [Warsaw]: Sputnik Photos, 2010.
ISBN978-83-927485-1-9. Photographs by Jan Brykczyński, Andrej Balco,
Andrei Liankevich [
Wikidata], Agnieszka Rayss, Milach (from the series Black Sea of Concrete), Filip Singer, Ivan Kurinnoy, Janis Pipars and Justyna Mielnikiewicz. With short texts in English by
Serhiy Zhadan,
Irena Karpa, and the photographers. "Photos taken in Ukraine in 2008–2010"; "the non-profit organization Altemus commissioned a team of young East European photographers from Sputnik Photos collective and Ukrainian writers, to travel the country and capture its ethos". Milach is credited as "book photo editor". Edition of 300 copies.
Stand By = Ӡа Беларусь. Warsaw: Sputnik Photos, 2012.
ISBN978-83-927485-5-7. Photographs of Belarus by Jan Brykczyński, Andrei Liankevich, Manca Juvan, Milach (from the series The Winners), Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Adam Pańczuk and Agnieszka Rayss. With text by
Victor Martinovich in English and Belarusian. Edition of 1000 copies.
Lost Territories Wordbook. Lost Territories Archive 1. Warsaw: Sputnik Photos, 2016. Photographs by various. Nearly one hundred short texts from twenty-one authors.
Fruit Garden. Lost Territories Archive 3. Warsaw: Sputnik Photos, 2017.
ISBN978-83-941826-7-0. Photographs by Andrej Balco, Jan Brykczyński, Andrei Liankevich, Michał Łuczak, Milach, Adam Pańczuk and Agnieszka Rayss; texts in English by Stefan Lorenzutti and
Maciej Pisuk [
Wikidata]; edited by Milach. Edition of 500 copies.
Awards
2009: Winner, first prize stories, Arts and Entertainment,
World Press Photo 2008, Amsterdam[6][4]