In December 1999, the thousand-year-long second millennium was going to end. The first day of the year 2000 was the beginning of an entirely new thousand-year-long millennium. That alone was quite an intense thought. On top of that, the whole world was scared that all the computers would stop working. The Y2K bug was on people’s minds.
When I woke up on January 1, 2000, I checked the computer first, and it worked normally. I looked outside; the world was still there and looked normal too. It was 7:30 in the morning when I went to the main square of my hometown (Wąbrzeźno) and took a few pictures of the first hours of “another thousand years.”
I took four pictures in four directions of the square, and I left. I didn’t even plan to print the images; I just wanted to have this moment recorded. By accident, they got printed. When I saw the images, I felt a deep shock. The unpleasant feeling of being ashamed and embarrassed of the way things are and the way things look. It was obviously like that all the time, but I never registered it. These 4 images, without any real intent, made me realise that what I see is not what is there. This painful shock made me look again at the place that I have known all my life, made me explore what I have known all my life, and helped me realise who and what I am. It took me the next 4 years to ease the pain and come to terms with my truth.
