diving

13.05.2020

Flying has something of a dive about it. I sink into another reality, into the depths. I am alone with myself, far from the hard ground.



During my home isolation I really missed this kind of solitary exploration of some space - until I dived into the archives. For that, too, you need time, calm, the will to fight, and the perspective of the road. It's conducive to deep diving, and yet I want to reach far away, to a world that no longer exists, to the memories of someone who was then a completely different person. 

I sit in front of the screen, the world in front of my eyes absorbs me completely - quite like using Professor Dumbledore's magical think-tank (who among you remembers the item from the Hogwarts headmaster's office?). The image comes to life, the space becomes three-dimensional, the touch of wind on the face appears, the steady whirr of the engine returns. I listen to this rhythm more than usual, I know that if the engine dies, I will become a real participant of the events below. And there stretches the boundlessness of the water and the desolate dead ground. No one is there, everyone is already evacuated. A sequence of photographs helps to reconstruct the course of the flight. I feel a bit like in Inception. I look around, trying to spot something that escaped my attention earlier. I throw out from the collection the main frames which were like lighthouses in the story about the flood in Sandomierz; I navigated around them, but today they would confuse me in my search, they would obscure what is hidden in their shadow. This is how today's picture came to the surface. Right now, 10 years after the events in Sandomierz.

I look at it and wonder how I missed it. I feel the power of contradiction because it's in my archive but I don't remember it. It is mine, but as if it were someone else's. I wonder if I would make one of these today. I would probably take a different one, because it is not taken vertically downwards, like most of my photographs. And I missed it so many times, and today I noticed it again. Again, I wonder how I would photograph this flood now. A litany of accusations starts: that I could have flown a little sideways, that I could have done it again, that I could have done it from a different angle... I try to avoid this analysis - you don't step into the same river twice. But maybe? 

I tame this picture, it becomes mine again and illustrates what is happening inside me when I am arguing with myself. I would like to live in the here and now, but I sit deep in the past analyzing it as if it could happen again. 

The longer I look, the more certain I am that although the photo shows a backhoe, it is a self-portrait.