Gurgaon/ New Delhi / India / 19.03.2020
The plane didn’t arrive. A golden cage decorated with diamonds will not change its purpose, it will always be a cage. We are waiting in a huge hotel for information about the possibility of returning to our country. It’s empty everywhere. Empty corridors. An empty restaurant and a hotel café. Closed spas, massage parlours and pool. An empty patio and gardens. Only the Indian staff discreetly observing us. They are afraid of us. For them, each white person is Italian, a potential carrier of the virus that has already conquered the world. Inside the hotel, blissful peace and quiet. Nothing disturbs the everyday “life” of the hotel, except for these few “inconveniences” of checking temperatures, disinfecting hands, fumigating the space around us. No pictures or noises from the outside reach us from behind the walls of hedges enclosing the hotel complex. Plants have a soothing effect on your mood. Always. When you turn on the television, everything changes. The room turns into a prison, and peace turns into fear. We make our way to the garden to look at the grass, the flowers and the green leaves of the hedge. We won’t be here tomorrow.
Goa/ India / 01.02.2011
Park Hyatt Goa Resort and Spa. Paradise on earth. For 5 days we did not go outside the park complex to have a decent look around. A photo session for a clothing brand. We finish the shoot and have time for ourselves. It is a hot torrid day, the sun is high, the sky is clear and we have a few hours before returning to Poland. 300 metres behind the hotel park in a hut by the beach where Indians are giving massages. I’m going along the shoreline for my first Ayurvedic massage.
I am. Time slowed down first and then stopped.
I am walking back on the beach, to the hotel and the crew waiting on me. My feet are buried in hot sand. The sun is hurting my eyes. I lower my head and speed up, I have to make my flight. My feet are sinking further and further and instead of footprints in the sand, they leave irregular pits. I’m slowing down. There is a trace. I raise my head and walk slowly ahead. I’ll make it. My footprints are left behind in the sand. The taxi driver speeds up. We have a plane to catch. We pass by so many things without paying attention to them. Not noticing them. I ask him to slow down. To stop. I want to take a last photo, a photo of a place I hadn’t seen from the hotel and which we would have passed by in a hurry.
Sławcia, holding the last photo at the hotel, on our last day in India.
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
