Lovely Polina Kazak, ‘Serial wanderluster, photographer, storyteller’ as she described herself, wrote on her @worduuup Instagram profile that she ‘escaped from Russia to explore the world’. One of those places to escape was Dubrovnik and here she made some seriously amazing photos!
‘I’m a wanderluster and a storyteller. I love moments. I love nights more than mornings, the moon more than the sun, and the here-and-now more than any sometime later. I belong to no man and to no city. I’m that girl who is lost in time, the girl who is vanishing constantly, perennially dissolving in the darkness and digressing further and further into the unknown. Just like the Cheshire cat :)’, she told Just Dubrovnik team, and our team member Maria Prkut @prxii did an inspirational interview with her.
‘My home is where I’m not. I can’t say I have a place I could call home now that mean any more than a key to an apartment. And more I think about it more I realize that Home for me has really less to do with a piece of soil but more with a piece of soul.
My Instagram page is my story. My road diary. I never know where I’m going, but I know I’m going somewhere glorious. I think life is delicious, and I want to gobble it up in big bites, eating, drinking, smelling, reading, talking, traveling – everything. I want everything. I’m hungry for everything, all the time. So much to see, think, celebrate, taste, absorb, charm, touch, try, do. I can feel myself come to life, eyes open, taking everything in, fingers running over textures, ears pricked for sounds. Life — is huge. You can’t breathe it, you can’t touch it, you can’t soak it up with your skin if you are wasting your time at home looking at the beautiful faces and stray souls of random people on your screen. I feel life is so genuinely interesting, that there’s so much to be tasted and tried and discovered’, Polina wrote us…
How many countries did I visit? I have no ideas. I’ve never been that good in math.
I travel for years. Every country, every place I go to is unique. I think travel is the discovery of truth… about the world, about yourself; a proof of the promise that humankind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each journey comes a new optimism that whatever hardships and despair you’re going through in life, there are ideas and people just waiting for you to help you to turn your world around, to impact your life, to inspire you, to make a difference for good. Each journey, wherever you go, becomes a part of you somehow, changes you, helps you to grow and by reaching these new faraway places you finally meet your true self. Whether it’s dancing on a rooftop of the ‘Beatles Ashram’ in Rishikesh, or driving to Kampala to have a rolex for breakfast, or flying to Sri Lanka to meet the sunrise on the top of the mountain ― all these are puzzles of my own story and every experience means the world to me. I’m always looking for those moments I can remember with laughter and excitement. And I never know where I can find myself tomorrow. It’s so natural to take a new step and so strange to freeze in one place. I do everything to shook my life so much that the luggage would fall from the shelves. My dream is to visit every county in the world so it doesn’t matter how many countries I left behind. It’s more important what adventures await me ahead.
And this is exactly why I went to Dubrovnik. The time has come. And I have to say I fell in love with Croatia. Traveling around your country is like being in a fairytale, with Game of Thrones and Star Wars in your mind or without. Everything is so familiar, so new and so magical at the same time. I’ve been to Dubrovnik, Lokrum, Split, Sibenik, Fortress of Klis. I’ve taken thousands of photos and I’ve written a lot of stories and I’d love to come back to explore, to experience, to absorb and to learn more about your country because it’s absolutely spectacular.
I am an artist as much as I can remember myself. Whether it’s a pencil, ink, paints or a camera lens – in the long run it doesn’t really matter. So, I’d say I’m making pictures for my whole life. My art is a chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.
Inspiration is everywhere. Books make me dream and invent my own worlds. I imagine myself a cheetah running so fast that its legs touch the ground only half the time it’s in motion. I smell pine and see the moon on a pink sky in Norway, hear wind in the tops of trees in Cambodia or waves breaking over rocks in Aruba, taste ginger snaps with green tea on a snowy evening in Vienna. I experience the wind blowing my hat off in Paris or get in a hot bath with white foam in Sweden, smell wet air and see a rainbow at dawn in Cape Town. And than I fly there to see it with my own eyes. And it looks even more spectacular than in my dreams.
Night walks through unexplored foreign city streets, the silence that comes after a rainstorm at dawn, a pink sky, oceans and jazz, airports and a hand waving from a train, motorbikes, the wild air and the road, intricate detective stories and crazy mind-blowing adventures, lavender fields, vintage iron spiral staircases, dancing in the rain, watching the stars, conversations on a rooftop at 5 am, a coffee with the sunrise, learning something exciting every day, staring at chandeliers in the long halls of the remarkably palatial empty marble palaces, photographing a moment that’s gone forever ― all this inspires me each day.
Do I have some role models in photography? The trick is to absorb everything you see and like, to learn something new every single day, to remember it and mix all this knowledge and impressions in your own way making it your own unique story.
Do I want to live in Dubrovnik? I thank Croatia and people I’ve met here for giving me this feeling of a home away from home but I can’t imagine myself living anywhere right now. I prefer crossroads instead of a warm house. Nights alone in hotels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am. Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life. I’ve seen a chunk of the universe but there’s still so much more to see. I’m addicted to movement as committed to transformation. But, yes, I’m also looking for this ideal place for me that I want to believe does exist and that I’ll be able to find one day.
However, for now my journey is not separate from life. Life is travel. Travel is life. Wherever you go, wherever you are — the goal is to make your individual life a deep and exciting trip. I wish you the blessings of wisdom & friendship. I wish you to look at the world with burning, fire-lit eyes, dream impossible dreams, follow your heart and to believe in magic. Because once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, faith gives us a fairytale. Bon voyage.
