Oasis

One of the important impulses that drove me to create this photo series was the note made in 2010 by the Australian press journalist Jo Chandler. In her intriguing text she expresses the emotions experienced when visiting the Polish-Soviet polar station in Antarctica (A.B. Dobrowolski Polar Station). Fascinated by the report and the underpinning mystery, I started to create a kind of an archive comprising different materials regarding Polish polar expeditions from the years 1958– 1979. The exhaustive search for information, articles, reports and photographic documentation helped me ascertain the chronology of events and the reasons why the station was abandoned by subsequent expeditions. A diorama based on the photographs, maps and satellite shots has proven a particularly useful tool. Through intensive stimulation of all senses, its threedimensionality and tangibility gave me a sense of continuity of experiences, the “feeling of participation”. A small portion of the White Land gained a new technical representation in the form of a spatial model created using digital tools and a computer-controlled miller. Owing to the miniature reconstruction, I could again encode the image with my own photographic narration. The series entitled “Oasis” is an attempt to externalise my imaginations and reflections referring to a place I have never visited.