Spring is approaching, and winter is drawing to a close. It is time to pause my Winterreise.

In 2021, confined at home for months, I felt an urgent need to go out. In a world where the unusual had become everyday and travel was nearly forbidden, I began a photographic journey through my own country.

I have always focused my camera on people, yet this time I turned it to empty landscapes — landscapes imbued with meaning, where absence itself becomes presence. These images capture not only the land but also my own thoughts, hopes, and reflections.

The journey began in winter, travelling by bus and car across Wallonia. Later, I moved to other landscapes that resonate with history and tension. The second chapter took me to the edges of Poland, along the borders with Russia, Lithuania, and Belarus. The third, and current, chapter unfolds in Moldova, at the border with Ukraine.

My Winterreisen inhabit a space between documentary and fiction. The territories are real, unstaged, and observed, yet they are also filtered through memory, imagination, and personal reflection. The resulting images create a fictional geography that intertwines the visible world with the inner landscape of perception and emotion.

These journeys are inspired by the spirit of Romanticism, when the horizon of a new era seemed to emerge from winter’s stillness.