Stepping Back to Move Forward
The last couple of months, I’ve been struggling with a lot of anxiety. I had severe panic attacks and even ended up in the emergency room at the hospital. So once again, I was forced to take a step back and put my photo/artist book project aside for a while. I spent more time reading and reflecting.
Before that, I had printed my first dummy and shared it with some people, which was really exciting. Their feedback gave me new perspectives on the work.
When I felt more energized, I revisited the book. Looking at it again, I noticed things I hadn’t seen before. I realized I had been too focused on “doing it right” instead of letting it flow more freely and intuitively. It was missing some soul. So I started making edits—not big changes, but allowing myself to experiment more and not restrain the work to a certain way. After doing that, I felt much happier with it, and the story came to life. I then printed the second dummy to see how these changes translated on paper.
Meanwhile, I began pitching my project—a phase that always comes with a mix of fear, excitement, and vulnerability. Luckily, I received some nice responses, which I’ll share once something concrete comes out of it.
One particularly exciting outcome of these conversations was that one of my contacts pointed me to a very impressive paper by Wojciech Klimczyk, titled “‘It was not Sinai’: Wayfaring with Nijinsky in and around St. Moritz – some reflections on practising dance history in the field” (read it here). In it, Klimczyk retraces the four enigmatic walks described in Nijinsky’s “diary,” using the concept of wayfaring (after Tim Ingold)¹ and the Upper Engadine landscape as a lens for dance history. The reflections on how these walks can’t truly be recovered—and how that impossibility itself opens new ways of understanding the past—blew me away.
I reached out to Klimczyk, and he sent me a warm and thoughtful reply. My next plan? To visit him in Kraków, exchange insights, and deepen my connection to the subject. How great is it to find someone who is just as passionate as you are about something?
Bellevue Institute in Kreuzlingen, Haus Harmonie, Doctor’s apartment, medical offices, and laboratory (1910). Photographic image by Alfred Wolf, Konstanz.
¹ Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes “wayfaring” as walking not just to reach a destination, but as a way of experiencing, noticing, and learning from the landscape itself. It’s about the journey as a form of knowledge, not just transport.
