I have been fascinated by wild landscapes since childhood,
because I see them as a realm where I can discover different sides
of my being. Sometimes what comes to mind may come as a surprise
to me. Since I was little, winter has been a special season.
My grandparents' village was one of my favorite places to be. The heavy snow of the late cold afternoons silenced all the surrounding space,
and sometimes a barking sound broke the silence.

 

All I could see was the frail, trembling silhouettes of the old houses that seemed to want to hide from the relentless frost. This shook me,
but in a good way. Walking slowly through the hills, I would listen
to the sound of the snow-covered woods, tell me their own story.
I would immerse myself in the shades of gray of the evening,
which slowly began to take over everywhere.

 

I note with sadness that more and more people can no longer appreciate the beauty of simple, ordinary places. Sometimes they even happen
to be very close to them. This is often due to the excitement of the mind by the images that come flooding in on social media sites.
 

Seeing, perhaps daily, a wide variety of landscapes, from the most exotic and special corners of nature to the most impressive urban places,
man defines his beauty primarily through the prism given by them.
He begins to want to see those spaces and sees them as ideal, sometimes because of the light, the intense colors, the right angle,
or some character in the composition.

 

I am not claiming that the above are unimportant, on the contrary,
they are extremely useful if used intelligently. However, an exaggerated digital processing and our expectation of encountering such landscapes
or chromatic explosions on a regular basis shapes our perception
to our disadvantage. Social media sites indirectly promote a constant competition between people, urging them to boast about how many trips they have taken, the extraordinary places they have visited, how happy they are, etc. All this can affect us all, more or less.

 

With the photographic series “Numbness” I set out to expose the beauty of a common place where, in winter, the forests and hills take
on an air of mystery and the bustle of the city disappears completely.
The stillness is broken by the occasional sharp wind that blows, giving the impression that the forest is luring you into its darkness. Who knows what unusual things you may encounter. Safety can teach you a lot,
and if you are willing to open your heart, you will see that where you think there is nothing, you can find everything. Simplicity, in its smallness, shows the one who wants to see, priceless things. Everyone,
according to their own nature, has the ability to find meaning.