Goa/ India / 17.03.2020
Soothing silence, the warmth of the sun and the waves of sea water is a medicine for all our fears, for all manner of diseases. The borders of India have been closed for four days now. We’re leaving today. We’re going back to Poland. It is hard to get a proper grasp of the fear; the visions of defeat and tragedy being broadcast over the media, alongside the blissful calm and a sense of security on a beach in paradise. Silence is calming, but it can also be disturbing, stimulating the imagination and reinforcing emotions. One stronger gust of wind, a louder wave, the sudden flutter of gulls flying by, emptiness where it ought not be. Human footprints in the sand, a trace of water and the awareness that we don’t know what awaits us in a few hours. The sea is pushing us ashore as if to say ‘Go back’. One last walk along the beach and we’ll be on our way, we’re travelling to Delhi to pick up a flight to Poland, a flight that will not take place. We will return here sometime. A lonely dog, like a guardian angel, is strolling alongside us on the beach.
Nordsenskiold Glacier Adolf Bay / Spitsbergen / Norway / 05.09.2019
One last look at Adolf Bay, the Nordenskiöld Glacier and we’re walking to the Adam Mickiewicz University Polish polar base in Petunia Bay. There are no roads on Spitsbergen, no high voltage poles and no people. There is silence built from the sounds of nature. The pounding of the waves steadily hitting the shore, the wind playing on the rocks between the glaciers. Time, as we’ve come to know it in civilisation, does not exist. There is only day and night. We came to Spitsbergen to see what condition the glaciers are in and what research on them looks like. Most of the glaciers are disappearing, as we’ve learnt from a glaciologist taking measurements for 10 years. There is insufficient snow in winter to even out the thickness of the ice after the melt in summer. But we can’t see this. We look at the snow-covered mountains, the sky-coloured water, the footprints of a bear and whale skeletons, the twenty million year old rocks and the two-centimetre tall trees. We see only beauty in everything, even in the smallest creation of nature. We don’t see the dying, we see the majestic arctic landscape.
This is a place we will return to with the frame, and once again, it will be held by Sławka S.
Each photograph used during the journey stops being luggage, changes its destiny, takes on a new life. It creates a unique travel sack with a story in the background. Always just one. One shot, one sack. Luggage (no excess)
Backstage
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