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Edyta Lang

@edyta_lang

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Photographer based in Scotland.
BA (Hons) Photography, London College of Communication, UAL

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Helen still remembered the time, when she knew not fear. The dense fog wouldn't faze her back then. Her entire life, she felt she lived nestled in the cupped hands of a giant. Her body sheltered. Removed from every harm's way. Every day Helen looked down at the world from the great height. No danger could touch her.
The giant carried her in his hands and showed her beautiful things. He protected her and told her stories.
It was springtime, when her Father fell ill. In fact, the doctors believed he fell ill long before then, he just didn't know it. The illness grew inside him, without him feeling a thing. In the spring he felt it for the first time.
Then, Helen's life changed. In the beginning these were little changes. The walks got shorter. The doors in their apartment, that used to always be wide open, got closed. Helen got asked to be quieter. While the voices on the other side of the doors got lowered down to whispers.
When Father's longer hospital stays began, their home turned sullen and shuttered.
In the summer, despite having only turned eight, Helen realised that the little changes might lead to the big, forever change. And with that realisation, the fear entered her perfectly safe life. It has slithered down her intestines and coiled itself in the pit of her stomach, like an eel. It wouldn't leave. Only grew.
So Helen was left to walk beside her Mother. Early afternoon in the empty, quiet, apart for the birds, park. Stepping shakily on slippery puddles of snow that a brief moment of sun began to melt, just to freeze again when the clouds returned and the evening began to fall.
#StoneInsideTheFruit#StoryOfTheFamily#WinterWanderland#FallingDarkness#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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5 days ago

Helen trotted along behind her Mother. Deeper into the empty park. Further away from the road where the people were. Her feet slipped every time she stepped on the layer of ice hiding underneath the snow the pathways were buried under. She would lose her balance and sway mid-step. Holding onto her Mother's arm was the only thing she could do not to fall. Helen's breathing felt more shallow and she could see her breath every time she exhaled.
Still, Josephine wouldn't stop. She didn't appear to notice the trouble Helen had keeping up with her pace. Nor her growing uneasiness and distress.
Helen lifted her head to look up at Mother's face. It appeared immobile, her eyes fixed ahead, not bearing an interruption. To her the walk was a task, means to hasten the passage of time. Not a source of enjoyment.
Heavy snowfall the night before and freezing temperatures discouraged most people from leaving their homes. The park, now deserted and snowed under, looked alien to Helen.
The little hill looked like an island, poking out from the sea of dense mist. The mist nestled in the little hollow, that during warm months was a carefully cultivated wildflower meadow. It reminded Helen of a scene she had seen in a painting. Or perhaps, it was the scary thing she dreamt the other night.
Snow's brilliant luminosity repelled the early afternoon looming darkness. The hair at the back of Helen's neck bristled.
It was the dreadful feeling of eyes looking at her. The gaze felt like droplets of rain falling all around her. Helen strained her eyes to see through the mist, across the meadow. In the distance, amongst trees her eyes found a shape that could have been a man. Helen jittered and looked to her Mother for help. Josephine tilted her neck back. In that moment she felt the warm sunlight on her cheeks and dreamt of oblivion.
#StoneInsideTheFruit#TheStoryOfTheFamily#NightTerrors#WinterWonderland#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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14 days ago

The outburst Josephine has suffered earlier felt like, she imagined, a blood letting would feel. It calmed her down but also drained her from energy.
The cold seized her entire body the moment she and Helen stepped out onto the street. It was still midday but the Sun, having tilted at the edge of its highest point, already began to tumble down towards sunset. The air was crisp and clear, yet the faintest hue of darkness crept in and stained it.
They set off to the park to walk along the same pathways as every time, in the same order. The wide promenade by the river, blanketed in dense snow, has been sprinkled with sand that by midday resembled black dirt. It made a gravely, crunchy sound, as they walked over it.
This was not the winter wonderland. The trees, with their bare branches contorted by wind, looked as if they were reaching their hands for help that would never come.
The uneasy silence got broken only by the sound of their footsteps and birds' cawing every now and then. As Josephine led the way deeper into the park, Helen followed her apprehensively. She held onto her Mother's arm and kept turning her head to look back over her shoulder.
Just as they have reached the cultivated wildflower meadow beneath the little man-made hill in the heart of the park, the wintry clouds parted and the setting Sun showered them with warm light. For a moment, both of them, the Mother and the Daughter, stood still beside each other, taken aback by this unexpected joy.
Sudden sadness and exhaustion came over Josephine and all she could think about was her bed. As cold as it was, it was soft and it was hers. Into sleep she'll escape.
#StoryOfTheFamily#StoneInsideTheFruit#WarmthOfTheSun#Sadness#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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21 days ago

It took many lovely layers to insulate from the morning's unpleasantness. Layered, thick softness and prettiness. Naturally, Helen sulked all the way through till noon. She ate her lunch in silence, averting her eyes away from her Mother. She has only cast a few quick glances at her, to gage how guilty she must have felt.
Josephine did feel guilty. And embarrassed. After her outburst, she also felt unglued. Earlier, she sat down at her husband's desk in the study, and tried to work. She couldn't focus. She could hear scratching coming from somewhere in the apartment. Intrusive, annoying, louder than her thoughts. Several times she paused her calculations, got up and quietly stepped out into the hallway to listen. The noise seemed to have travelled from room to room and it baffled her how. It sounded louder than a mouse and whenever she opened the door to the room she thought the sound was coming from, it would be empty. It felt as if the reality freyed at the edges of her peripheral vision.
It didn't snow or rain during the day, so Josephine decided to take Helen for a walk after lunch, to lift the mood.
Tying up her winter boots, Helen looked on at her Mother. It struck her as odd how, propped up by pride, adults are much more keen to play Pretend than children.
Civility can disguise a person better than a costume.
Both dressed up and wrapped up warmly, they stepped out onto the cold street and set off to the park.
Josephine hated how natural it felt to her to act as if nothing bad had happened. Her daughter, a less willing participant in pretending, trod along. She thought about asking Helen if she heard any strange noise. Eventually though they just didn't talk.
#TheTaleOfAFamily#StoneInsideTheFruit#ForebodingWinterDay#UnsettlingSound#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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a month ago

Rage came for Josephine slowly. It didn't happen all at once. It was like water filling the cove. Rising steadily when the tide returns. An involuntary response to the floor being pulled out from underneath her feet. The great injustice of it.
For weeks, if not months, every night she'd gone to bed and it was cold. She'd lift the duvet, together with the fur blanket laid on top of it, and find the bedsheet underneath it cold. It was the coldness of a room no one breathed in during the day. A thoroughly aired room. A lonely room. A clean and fresh-smelling reminder of her husband's absence.
The softness of the unused pillow became to Josephine the loudest embodiment of unfairness of illness.
Every night she would lie down in her bed and for a long time listen to silence. And get angry. The anger was the thief. It was the hand in need of a throat to clench itself around.
Erupting at her daughter was uncalled for, but when it happened, she couldn't stop herself from shouting.
When silence fell upon her bedroom again, like disturbed dust, she could hear Helen's defiant footsteps in the hallway and her door being slammed.
Josephine couldn't admit to being wrong, and after all her daughter did give into some primitive impulses, disobeyed her and lied about it. Josephine walked up to the window and looked out, wondering if the neighbours heard her screams. Now, she could hear Helen's quiet weeping and a great sense of shame made her shiver.
#StoryOfAFamily#StoneInsideTheFruit#RecollectingChildhood#UncotrollableEmotions#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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a month ago

Josephine's footsteps finally sounded in the hallway. Fast and resolute, little heels of her house-shoes tapping softly on the wooden floors.
Helen heard them too late to run back to the kitchen. Ten minutes earlier she disregarded her Mother's instructions and left. She has grown so impatient waiting, it felt as if her restlessness was a liquid rising inside her little body. Had she stayed in there just a moment longer, it would have, bubbling, filled her entirely and spilled over in an explosion.
She moved through the hallway on her tippy toes, like a burglar in a cartoon, and snuck into her Mother's bedroom.
For a moment she sat on the big bed in silence and looked around the empty room. It looked fresh and bright. The heavy night curtains were open and the floor length white, day curtains allowed the daylight to flood in, through the petal shaped holes in the lace.
It felt cold. Even in January, every morning, her Mother would leave one of her windows open to let the breeze in. After a few minutes Helen began to shiver.
'I need something warm.'
She opened the middle drawer of the dresser and her eyes fell onto the irresistible sight of her Mother's silk dressing robes. Excited, wide-eyed, knowing it was bad of her, she took one out and wrapped herself in the delicate fabric.
Tripping over, she ran towards the standing mirror, stepping on the hem with her dirty slippers.
Then, mid twirl, she heard her Mother's footsteps and froze, forced to fall onto Earth. The storm clouds gathered. Crackling electricity coursing through them. Her Mother's disappointed eyes and her anger were as inevitable as the rain.
#StoneInsideTheFruit#TaleOfAFamily#ChildhoodDiary#DelicateDelights#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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a month ago

Helen knelt on the bench by the kitchen table and, turning her back to the door, rested her elbows on the window sill. The edges of the glass panes were cast in shining ice. In the freezing night the frost painted flowers and star like shapes in their corners.
Helen stretched her back and craned her neck a little to look down into the courtyard. Somebody has already swept the snow piled up throughout the night aside and sprinkled the ground with sand. The solid looking mound of snow laid by the wall of the neighbouring building.
It looked big enough to dig a tunnel into and hollow it out from the inside. It crossed Helen's mind to quietly slip on her boots, put her coat on and sneak out outside, while her Mother was on the phone. But then she remembered she promised to be good.
She sighed deeply, turned back again, and sat down nicely, facing the table. Her legs felt restless and swung back and forth under the table. Being told to sit and wait felt like an unfair punishment.
Her eyes fell again onto the white plate, empty but for the wet, green bits left from the eaten strawberries. She picked up a few wet leaves and played with them between her fingers. She thought of the tone of her Mother's voice. Cross, disappointed.
Being good was hard on a good day. Lately it really felt like stepping onto the crackling, thin ice. Sitting, awaiting an avalanche, having heard the rock rumble.
#StoneInsideTheFruit#BeingAChild#TaleOfAFamily#Horror#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago

The neighbour's story was of a tragedy, that has befallen another family living a few blocks away.
Marie told it so excitedly, it made Josephine think about something sickly sweet, and her stomach churned a little.
She closed her eyes and waited for the wave of detail to wash over her and retreat.
She found confrontation beneath her, so she didn't interrupt or comment, even though she found the tale distasteful. Silently, however, she passed her judgement on nosy Marie, who must have waited all morning, until the earliest hour that would be considered civil, to call her and flesh out, frame by frame, how the police were called yesterday, in the late afternoon, to Mr and Mrs Merle's home.
It always stopped Josephine in her tracks, and made her look almost in awe, how a God fearing person, deeply entrenched in her faith, like Marie, could experience so much joy from witnessing the misfortune of others. And remain so indifferent and unmoved by it at the same time. How vivid the colours illuminated by the siren lights appeared to her?
She dreaded to think, what was Marie telling people about her, when she wasn't around to hear it. Had she known how fragile things have become, what would she do to haste the disintegration, just to revel in the aftermath. Gauke at the shattered pieces left behind.
Josephine listened quietly, then awkwardly ended the call and put the phone down. She felt certain hers wasn't the only number Marie would dial this morning.
Now, it was time for her to deal with the real matter at hand.
#TaleOfAFamily#StoneInsideTheFruit#DomesticHorror#HumanNature#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago

The voice on the phone was not the one Josephine expected. Perhaps that was for the best. The call she was waiting for would bring either good or bad news. Every morning, with half of her body still dipped in the sleep, in the not-long-enough moment, when dream imagery still swirled underneath her eyelids, Josephine prayed she wouldn't have to wake up just yet.
With wakefulness came the heavy sense of dread. It felt like a physical weight wrapped around her sternum.
She would sit up in her bed, her back leaning against the headboard and tried to calm her racing heart down with deep breaths.
'Please, don't let it be the day I find out.' A couple more deep breaths. No tears. 'Surely, it can't be today. They would have called at the beginning of the week.'
That thought calmed the panic down. Josephine was able to get up and, propelled by hope, put herself together for the day.
Right now, listening on the phone to her neighbour, Josephine felt rather annoyed. She peeked behind the window curtains and let her eyes linger on the enormous amount of snow that fell overnight. Judging by the neighbour's sickly excitement, this was going to be a longer story. Josephine walked across the living room and perched down on the edge of the sofa, the very limit the phone cord allowed her.
#StoryOfAFamily#StoneInsideTheFruit#UneasyMemory#Unhomely#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago

The ascent began gentle and slow. Helen could reach out her arm and place her hand on the tree branches, to greet them. They felt cold, rough and imposing. Despite the absence of any sign of life, they didn't feel dead. Helen thought they felt asleep. As if the entire forest has fallen deep into a slumber.
Its leaves fell, and the new ones didn't grow. It stood there, still, for years. And as time passed, the silence amongst the trees grew deafening and the trees grew tall. Their roots reached deep into the earth and digested it.
The higher the altitude, the colder it got. Helen's body felt hot from being wrapped in the blue fur, but her bare feet, dangling off the cloud, were icy cold.
Little droplets of sweat and dew appeared on her brow. Her breathing became more laboured. Condensation began to evaporate from her head. Strands of wet hair, clumped together, got glued to her forehead and her red cheeks.
Near the very tree tops, her hand met a thick and slippery surface. Large veins of pink, fleshy slime mould bound themselves tightly to the tree trunks and the branches. The plasmodium startled her and shook her into the realisation of how eerily empty this outside place was and how alone was she in it. Then, finally, the fear took hold.
#DreamJournal#StoneInsideTheFruit#DiaryEntry#Innermost#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago

The warmth of the fur dissolved the chill in Helen's body. First slowly, beginning with her naked feet, then quite rapidly, to the point when she had to peek out from beneath it, to cool her head.
The landscape around her changed a little. It must have happened when she dozed off.
The clearing was now filled with mist. It looked unlike any mist she had ever seen. Dense, almost solid looking clouds floated just above the ground. They were bright and fluffy, like grazing sheep in a pastoral painting.
As she sat up, still wrapped in the blue fur coat, the clouds reached her middle part. Her chest, neck and head sticking up above them.
They emanated a faint light that allowed her to look a little bit deeper into the woods. 'These tree trunks look so sad.' Naked, devoid of leaves, rough, scarred. The forest bathed in the range of browns, blues and grays.
Helen placed her hand on one of the clouds. Encouraged by its thickness she got up and carefully sat down on it. The cloud wobbled but didn't fall apart. It supported her weight and began to lift.
Ascending towards the tree tops Helen felt elated to see the stars in the firmament and to leave the dark place behind.
#DiaryEntry#DreamJournal#Fantasy#StoneInsideTheFruit#FilmPhotography by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago

It was quiet in the forest. The birds and the deer fell silent. Helen didn't hear anything, apart from the crunching of dry leaves and twigs, breaking under the weight of her body. The trees were bare and she was aware so were her feet.
'I must be dreaming. Because I don't go outside without my shoes.'
In near complete darkness, she had to extend her hands in front of her to avoid walking into trees and hurting herself. Every few steps she felt the rough bark, an arm's length away from her, and carefully stepped around it.
There was no clear path. The woods were densly overgrown. The leaves all fell deep in the past. It was a place no one spent their childhood exploring.
Still, Helen didn't feel fear. She just marvelled at the textures her palms and soles were touching. Everything felt dry, sharp and real. She expected to wake up with scratches and cuts.
Somehow, Helen knew that high above her head, above the naked torsos of leafless trees, shone a bright moon and stars. Constellations different then the ones her Father had shown her from the garden in his old house. Now, they were entirely obscured by the clouds.
Helen felt that someone brought her to this place outside. She didn't like this, so, as it happens in dreams, her mind shrouded her in safety. An unnaturally blue fur, extraordinarily soft and almost glowing, lied just beneath her feet. She sat down on the cold ground and slipped under it. Her eyes closed and she fell even deeper asleep.
#DiaryEntry#DreamJournal#StoneInsideTheFruit#MemoryOfATimeLongTimeAgo#PhotographyHorror by @edyta_lang

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2 months ago