Sometimes I Take Another Way Back

When I was seven years old, my grandfather gave me a map of Białystok. With it, I began my first journeys—tracing routes with my finger across the paper. Before falling asleep, I would study the network of streets, trying to align it with the places I had already seen and remembered. Unknowingly, I was constructing my own image of the city, sometimes transferring it onto paper out of boredom. It was never a faithful reproduction of cartographic reality, but rather a reflection of the emotions a seven-year-old attached to particular places.Many years later, I encountered the theories of Kevin Lynch. In his writings on the image of the city, he argues that long-term attachment to a place generates lived experiences, which are stored in memory as impressions of time and space.Adapting Lynch’s ideas to my own practice, I set out to create a subjective map of Białystok—the city where I was born and where I continue to live.