Gliwice, 20 June 1973

Dear Krysia

I imagine that you must be thinking badly about me and you are right. Yesterday I found between journals a letter I had written to you in early May, I was certain that I had sent it and I had been waiting for an answer. Well, frankly speaking, it’s sclerosis, but perhaps my book¹ was more to blame, or rather the paste-up – the proposal which completely absorbed me for almost 3 months. It was crazy. At first, I wanted to make it for the Book Fair. Each cycle required long work, changing the conception without changing the content, hundreds of revisions – again and again. Some photographs are composed of six and others of as many as 39 shots. Then I put together. Lack of adequate materials made the work longer. Fortunately I didn’t have classes with student in this semester, so I could work all day, until late in the night, sometimes until 3 o’clock. In the morning at the Polytechnic, and then at home. What a mess, photos everywhere, and so on and so forth.

But despite the huge effort and exhaustion it made it possible to forget about what for the last six months is no longer an obsession, but reality – illness and death. Just when I celebrated my name day, there was the funeral of Emil [Kugler], the one I always travelled with – a cancer, and then the same thing with my brother, here in Gliwice. It is simply horrible to look at someone’s torment and know that you can’t do anything. Now he’s constantly begging me for poison, he is half-paralysed (55 years), and he had been so strong.

I have been accused that my album is too sad, am I capable of showing joy when seeing and feeling something else? But the project includes cycles with pretty girls and even nudes, but these are very sentimental. To the point of being tacky. The commission – [Zbigniew] Dłubak, [illegible] assessed them very highly. The paste-up was at the [Book] Fair, I have to wait for the result, but for now I submitted it to the publishing house and I am waiting for opinions of various commissions. If it was a thing about socialism, the whole process would be very quick, but because it isn’t, it will drag on. Altogether it took me half a year of intense work, but it is the most my own.

On 3 July I go to Spain, I come back on 21 July, and although I have a lot of vacation left, I haven’t made any plans for later. I will be in Rabka for a while – for I will be making an album about Rabka. I would go for some 19 days to Hungary, but there is no one who would come with me. I would also travel across Poland, but here there are also no takers, and to walk about with a camera on your own is a bit dangerous and silly. But perhaps you would have some free days in your plans, perhaps we will go somewhere for a while.

Write to me – I will try to call you Thursday evening. In June I was busy making money, but the weather is so horrible, so cold, that I don’t even regret that our plans had come to nothing. Try to figure something out and don’t be angry with me.

I sent you all my love, greetings for Romek, kisses for Ewa.

1) Zofia Rydet means here the album The World of Feelings and Imagination, finally published only in 1979.