Dear Krysia, undated

Don’t be angry that I wasn’t writing for so long, but there is no time for anything now, even artistic work and making money have to wait. Not to speak about the mess in the house, etc. I am working whole days until late in the night on my lectures. At last I was given a photography course, for fifth year students, just before graduation. On top of it I got a three-room workshop in the new building of the Architecture Department, but it is just bare walls, I have to do everything on my own, furnish it, I often have to find the silliest things, such as pliers, to argue with people and fight for the money, to arrange the curriculum myself and so on and so forth.

I already have classes and lectures, six hours a week, but altogether it takes much longer. The young ones are very eager, to the point of fleeing from other classes. And I don’t have a free moment. In the mornings I am looking for furniture, cameras, instruments, chemicals, etc. On top of it people always want something from me. I have 36 students and everyone has a different camera, and except for two they have never taken photos before. It is very difficult, I have never been well versed in various cameras besides my own, in fact it didn’t interest me in the least, just like the gammas, resolution, and so on and so forth.

All afternoons I sit surrounded with books, I have to learn a lot myself, and I have forgotten some of the mathematics and optics. On top of it, our books are outdated to tell the truth. I am rescued by the encyclopaedia, 12 volumes, “Savoir Fotographie” - an excellent thing, you should translate it. Of course, translating from French and German also takes a lot of time. Every day I go to sleep past 1 o’clock, and I dream about various lenses, cameras, graphs, gammas and other educative things. Exercises are the most pleasant, I try to find interesting ones. The first exercises were in perspective and the depth of focus – it came out quite nicely. Then in the forms – for example, paper, eggs, string, onion, in various arrangements, close-ups, I wanted my students to show me these objects as a study of 1. light and shade, 2. form, 3. document of function, 4. fantasy. The string produced the most interesting outcomes. Today we were doing portraits in an interior with various types of light. They were so excited that they asked me to stay after 3 o’clock, for they wanted to develop at least part of it. Next week we start working in the darkroom. It’s a pity they are in the fifth year, and they will soon go away with what I teach them. If it was the second or third year, it would be quite different, I could create an interesting group. Anyway, so far I have a lot of patience and enthusiasm for it – I think that I will get some results. Later we will start doing various modifications.

I write down every lecture, but I try hard not to read it out, I use transparencies quite a lot. It’s a pity that because of it I had to drop my work for a while, but I am telling myself that only the beginnings are difficult. I think that we will see each other after all, but unfortunately I can’t think about any travelling right now, thank you for the invitation, but visit me when you are in Opole. I can’t invite you officially as the GTF, for right now I don’t go there at all, but I invite you privately, my colleagues will come and we’ll talk.

Kisses and hugs,

Zosia