SPUTNIK PHOTOS

Katharina Dubno, re-creation

I was seven years old when, together with my parents, I left Poland for Germany. However, Poland has never left me. Likewise, Izabela, my cousin, had to leave something behind her, here in Poland. At the age of 26, she decided to join the Carmelite Order; 12 years later she and four other sisters left it.
Today, they live in the ideal “Car(a)mel” that she founded – an open house for those who seek God in Żarkach-Letnisko, our family summer house that I remember from my childhood. I wondered how a woman could lead a fulfilled life in complete seclusion, in a house in the middle of a forest.
My curiosity was stronger than my doubts. I travelled from Germany many times to their refuge, but it was a while until I was ready to engage in the experiment and “cross the threshold of the convent” – not as a guest, but as an observer and participant.
Waking up at 5:00 am, contemplation, morning prayer, mass, breakfast, work – I watched all these rituals in that small space, camera in hand, until I understood that this method was not sufficient to reflect the spiritual dimension of such a life. It was the beginning of an internal change that made me deal with the history of each of the sisters: Iza, Monika, Alina and Klaudia – their faith, their abilities, their convictions. Finally I realised that by creating themselves anew, becoming Jonatana, Augusta, Walteria and Elizeusza, they had remained faithful to each other. This opened my eyes to everything that had surrounded me so far and sharpened my view of the essence of things.
A person who undertakes a journey deep inside themself and finds their identity, is able to make great changes and establish a bond with everyone and everything in their environment – beyond the limits of creeds, cultures and nations.
In order to be able to meet with the sisters as an equal and become part of their community, I worked solely with a normal lens and natural light. The lives of the sisters, marked by a deep inner peace, in harmony with nature and in harmony with the community, are reflected in the balanced composition of each photograph of the cycle.
The ordered rhythm of the day, punctuated by rituals, finds expression in an economical form, a repetitive and precisely composed visual language that gives equal weight to every person and thing: everything has a soul!
I supplemented the story with archival portrait photos and photos of the sisters’ youth to emphasise the interweaving of the present with their past and show that they remained faithful to themselves. The re-creation series is a meditative story about the microcosm in which the whole is shown through the smallest details.