... OR get up with effort and struggle to go ahead, exposing myself to inevitable toil and suffering, overcome anxiety, make decisions, meet desires of my heart, follow the principles IN ORDER TO gather strength, power and confidence that build my humanity – only then I live and only then time is not able to touch me.*

Well then ... can I let the boat rot and disintegrate painfully into nothingness or it is my duty to protect her from the touch of time ... then the fog vanishes and so the sun starts shining ... aaand one ... aaand two ... aaand three ... swash, splash, splash ...

Joanna Fedorowicz Poland, Krakow, July 2015

*Roman Ingarden, „Man and Time”, in: A Booklet about a Man, 1972

International photo exhibition "Touches of Time"

organized by art group AFUK from the Czech Republic

31.7.2015 Žirovnice, the Check Republic

9.5.2016 Kielce, Filharmonia Świętokrzyska

WAITING AT THE BANK OF A SLOW AND WIDE RIVER ... actually she is stuck on the shore, the solitary boat, waiting for someone to push her back to water so that she can float on the river again, that is do what she was created for. But she is waiting, suspended in the time of a foggy morning and the space of a wide embankment - Will it happen today? Today lasts forever. Tomorrow comes and again it is today. Nothing changes. Hmm ... just like in the play by Samuel Beckett "Waiting for Godot" in which the characters, touched by disability to go further, powerless like a clock which has stopped, do nothing to get out of the dark dell of life. Well, we sometimes find ourselves in this kind of impossibility to act, too, don’t we? What do we do then? Are we waiting?

It is interesting that the photo was taken at the site, which in its history has recorded action rather than waiting. It was 3rd September 1939 when to the shore of the village, called Mięćmierz, came by the riverboat twenty-one boxes and eight rolls of the most valuable treasures which had been exhibited in the museum of the Wawel Castle in Krakow, among others: the biggest in the world collection of tapestries, royal insignia, hussar armours, precious silverware, works of art and valuable relics of the Polish nation – packed and transported by the museum employees. The transport was embarked and went on for further journey, finally to Canada; it returned to Poland, to Krakow after many years. Thanks to the action of the Wawel museum staff and the local peasants, their patriotic attitude and selflessness, priceless tokens of Polish culture were neither looted nor destroyed during the Second World War.

Professor Roman Ingarden, Polish philosopher, explains that because in my life I can behave in different ways, I always bear the consequences of my choice: I can surrender to time, letting it destroy me OR I can become independent so that time does not touch my heart - the center of my will and understanding - even though it causes other changes to my body.

So my choice is: either squander my strength on the seemingly valuable matters, wreck myself with the minor trials of everyday life, continue lumbering in anticipation for a change, without making any effort ...