WINDOWS TO EUROPE
“A look at the journeys of self-discovery”
Terka Prejdová
It's a part of our everyday life to look through a window, we often do it without noticing, looking at the path leading to our house, watching the street and all what is happening there, we let our imagination or our thoughts fly away while we fix our look at the horizon framed by a window. These solid frames let us look outside and inside: come and leave to life and realities.
The exhibition Windows to Europe was born for a simple reason: to share; I believe that sharing is the highest expression of support that we can give each other on our life journeys. I met many people during my trips around Europe. Some of them have become a part of my life forever, some accompanied me on my journeys just for a while. But all of these encounters always inspired me and precisely these moments and encounters I wanted to capture with my camera. I hope that the short texts from the European literature together with the photos will help me to show the magic of the moments which I experienced on my way.
The exhibition consists of twenty photographs, at the first sight they don't seem much related, but together they create a compact portrait of Europe - a diverse continent, captured and immortalized in this selection of pictures. The exhibition shows cities, landscapes, people and abstract details, too. I think that each photograph is attractive for someone and evokes some memories or experience, because each one of us is on a different part of our life journey and is looking for answers to different questions set by life.
Enjoy the photographs in your own way, let yourself get carried away by your own imagination. I invite you to dream about the stories hidden behind each of these windows of fantasy.
Spain - Madrid, 2012
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Men livet er både trist og høytidelig. Vi slippes inn i en vidunderlig verden, treffer hverandre her, hilser på hverandre - og går sammen en liten stund. Så blir vi borte for hverandre og forsvinner like brått og urimelig som vi en gang kom.
- Jostein Gaarder, Sofies verden
Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Spain - Way of St. James, 2012
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Todos os dias vemos sempre o melhor caminho a seguir, mas só andamos pelo caminho que estamos acostumados.
- Paulo Coelho, O Diário de um Mago
We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.
- Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
Spain - Way of St. James, 2012
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The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.
- Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins
Czech Republic - South Moravia, 2009
Nemyslím na nic. Nic nechci, po ničem netoužím. Na obzorech se vlní obilí. Brzy budou žně. Vzduch voní chlebem. Páry motýlů opojeně krouží nad zemí a klesají do travin. Celé hodiny se dívám na mraveniště. Zůstanu tu měsíc, dva, tři, kolik budu chtít. Mám čas. Na všechno. Na život i na smrt. Ty hluboké, ty čisté nebe nade mnou!”
- František Kupka - Pražské Nokturno
I’m thinking of nothing. There is nothing I want and nothing I desire. The waving wheat on the horizons. Soon the harvest comes. The air smells of bread. Couples of butterflies are headily cyrcling above the ground and descending to the grass. I’m watching an anthill for hours. I will stay here a month, two, three, how many I want to. I have time. For everything. For life and death. You deep, you clean sky over me!
- Frantisek Kupka - Prague Nocturne
Latvia - Riga, 2009
“How do you spell 'love'?" - Piglet
"You don't spell it...you feel it." - Pooh”
- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Spain - Granada, 2012
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We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
- Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Finland - Porvoo, 2012
Oli erityisen hyvä ilta aloittaa kirja.
- Tove Jansson, Kesään kirja
It was a particularly good evening to begin a book.
- Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
Poland - Warsaw, 2011
Tiemna, zamknięta kawiarnia,
Ulica pusta bez dna.
Wśród mokrych liści latarnia,
Mgła.
Cichnący słychać w oddali
Jęk zamykanych bram
I otośmy z sobą zostali
Tej nocy znów sam na sam.
...
- Antoni Slonimski, W Warszawie
Dark, locked is the café,
The street is empty, bottomless,
A lantern in the middle of wet leaves;
fog
From afar softly to be heard
closing the gate with creak,
So again here we stayed
together alone in the morning.
...
- Antoni Slonimski, In Warsaw
Hungary - Budapest, 2011
Ich bin nämlich eigentlich ganz anders, aber ich komme nur so selten dazu.
- Ödön von Horváth, Zur schönen Aussicht
Actually I'm quite different. But I so rarely have time to show it.
- Ödön von Horváth, Zur schönen Aussicht
Finland - National Park Olhava, 2012
Земля хотя и не родная,
Но памятная навсегда,
И в море нежно-ледяная
И несоленая вода.
На дне песок белее мела,
А воздух пьяный, как вино,
И сосен розовое тело
В закатный час обнажено.
А сам закат в волнах эфира
Такой, что мне не разобрать,
Конец ли дня, конец ли мира,
Иль тайна тайн во мне опять.
- Анна Ахматова, 1964
This land, although not my native land,
Will be remembered forever.
And the sea's lightly iced,
Unsalty water.
The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,
The air is heady, like wine,
And the rosy body of the pines
Is naked in the sunset hour.
And the sunset itself on such waves of ether
That I just can't comprehend
Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,
Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.
- Anna Akhmatova, 1964
Romania - National Park Retezat, 2010
We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know -- that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.
- Beryl Markham, West with the Night
Germany - The Black Forest, 2011
Einsamkeit ist Unabhängigkeit, ich hatte sie mir gewünscht und mir erworben inlangen Jahren. Sie war kalt, o ja, sie war aber auch still, wunderbar still undgroß wie der kalte stille Raum, in dem die Sterne sich drehen.
- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
– Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
The Netherlands - Amsterdam, 2010
Ik denk niet aan alle ellende, maar aan de schoonheid die er nog steeds is.
- Anne Frank, Het Achterhuis
I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
- Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Poland - Warsaw, 2012
Au fond de son âme, cependant, elle attendait un événement. Comme les matelots en détresse, elle promenait sur la solitude de sa vie des yeux désespérés, cherchant au loin quelque voile blanche dans les brumes de l’horizon.
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon.
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
France - Nice, 2011
K zrcadlu ji nepřitahovala ješitnost, nýbrž údiv nad tím, že vidí své já. ... Zdálo se jí, že vidí svou duši, která se jí dává poznat v rysech její tváře. ... Viděla v něm věrné vyjádření své povahy.
- Milan Kundera, Nesnesytelná lehkost bytí
It wasn't the vanity attracting her to the mirror, but the astonishment at seeing her own "I". ...She thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face. ... She saw in it a faithful representation of her character.
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
France - Saint-Paul de Vence, 2011
Les lieux que nous avons connus n'appartiennent pas qu'à l'espace où nous les situons pour plus de facilité. Ils n'étaient qu'une mince tranche au milieu d'impressions contigües qui formaient notre vie d'alors ; le souvenir d'une certaine image n'est que le regret d'un certain instant ; et les maisons, et les routes, et les avenues sont fugitives, hélas, comme les années.
- Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann
The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.
- Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Czech Republic - South Moravia, 2011
První sny dívek, které jsou
zamilovány nejdřív jen do lásky,
bývají jako tolik věcí na světě
tajemnější než tajemství zpovědní!
Nikdo se o nich nedozví,
protože nejsou ještě vymyšlena slova
tak cudná a tak vášnivá zárověň.
- Jaroslav Seifert, Píseň o Viktorce
The first dreams of girls who are
at first in love only with love itself,
tend to be, like so many things in the world,
more mysterious than the confessional secrets!
Nobody will ever know about them,
because words so chaste and so passionate at the same time
have not been invented yet.
- Jaroslav Seifert, The Song about Viktorka
Sweden - Stockholm, 2009
Jag bärs i min skugga
som en fiol
i sin svarta låda.
- Tomas Tranströmer, För levande och döda - April Och Tystnad
I am carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black case.
- Tomas Tranströmer, For the Living and the Dead – April and Silence
Italy - Venice, 2009
Ogni posto è una miniera. Basta lasciarcisi andare. Darsi tempo, stare seduti in una casa da tè a osservare la gente che passa, mettersi in un angolo del mercato, andare a farsi i capelli e poi seguire il bandolo di una matassa che può cominciare con una parola, con un incontro, con l'amico di un amico di una persona che si è appena incontrata e il posto più scialbo, più insignificante della terra diventa uno specchio del mondo, una finestra sulla vita, un teatro d'umanità.
- Tiziano Terzani, Un indovino mi disse
Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread – a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met – and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.
- Tiziano Terzani, A Fortune-Teller Told Me
Italy - Venice, 2009
I found that we were gliding up a street - a phantom street; the houses rising on both sides, from the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath their windows.
- Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy
