The Seesaw

2009
29 photographs 30×40 cm manually printed (lith print) by the author

While looking through my old family photographs and recollecting fragments of reminiscences I realized that I could never describe period of childhood as a happy, carefree time in spite of loving parents and problem-free family. I was thinking a lot about this paradox trying to understand why all components of comfortable child life didn`t fulfill me with the feeling of the happiness which was talked about by adults. The idea of this series is an attempt to describe and visualise feelings called up by my childhood memories, an attempt to understand why a child surrounded by love and care of his nearest feels uncomfortably.
When talking to my friends about it I found out that my experience is not singular. In reality many people painfully interpret years of their childhood as a period full of difficult experiences though they grew up in normal families. Thinking about how hypertrophied is the child`s perception of the world I recall the story by Herman Hesse “Demian” one part of which describes the emotional experience of a little boy. Because of idle curiosity he ate some father`s berries without his permission. Constant fear of punishment, feeling of guilty, shame and impossibility to confess turned every moment of the boy`s life into unbearable torture lasting for weeks. How many similar situations were in a life of every child? Is an adult able to realize all this range of feelings and emotions boiling up in the little soul?