Secluded, Near Woods (2023)

It is the year 2017 and my parents are buying an old timber cottage in the Beskydy hills, in the village of Valašská Polanka.

During my first visit, when the cottage was not yet officially ours, both my family and I were enchanted by the landscape of rolling hills, meadows, and forests. The second trip was already “to our place.” At that time I was 14 and puberty was still strongly shaking me. At this age, it would seem that the last thing that would interest me is the quiet of the forest and a wooden cottage treated with ox blood. A place without internet connection and any sign of dynamic city life. Yet I was immediately sure that I would like to live here.

Of course, it was quite an exaggerated wish and, for the social system that we also follow, quite impossible.

Although our future stays were only for short periods of weekends and exceptionally holidays and vacations, my wish was fulfilled. With the arrival of COVID-19 and the closure of schools, my sisters and I had more free time, and so we were given the opportunity to properly renovate the cottage and make it habitable even for a five-member family with a dog. However, as soon as we began to intervene in the timber house that had been standing for decades, complications arose. It was at that moment that I got the opportunity to experience “my dream.” The cottage had to be kept running and we were forced to stay longer than originally planned. Dad was the only one who regularly commuted to work and back. Thanks to that we were still in some contact with the surrounding world.

Life in such a different environment was a big contrast for all of us compared to the everyday city rush. It is quite strange that as soon as I get out of the car under the hill above Valašská Polanka, everything around suddenly slows down, becomes quiet, and a person calms down internally. It was already then that my project “Alone in the Forest” began to emerge. At that time still without a name and intention.

This book is a cross-section of life that we live in such a landscape little affected by civilization. The images were created naturally in the environment of my family over the course of several years. However, most of the photographs come from a later period. The series mixes both an image of reality and also my subjective feeling, reflected in the photographic approach.

Alongside the photographs, the publication also includes diaries of the former owners of the timber house, who spent most of their time in this place. The lines in which they carefully recorded various parameters such as air temperature or activities in the garden are an example that life outside civilization is possible and still natural for us humans.