Long before Migula Studio had a name, there were years of searching. Different cities, different materials, different chapters. Looking back, the important question is not only where I have been, but what remained through all those changes.
The First Image
I remember my mother at the sewing machine. The way her hands moved through the fabric was simply normal, something present in the house.
I didn't know then that this image would stay with me.
There was also a terrace in Przemków. I told my mother: "I'll be in the USA." I didn't know the way there. I had no plan. I only felt that the world was larger than what I saw around me.
These are the first two images. They don't need explaining.
Mama / maszyna
Placed against Section 01 — the image the chapter opens with.
Przemków
The terrace referenced in Section 01 — a place, not a staged scene.
Places
Poland. Before I went anywhere, this is where I first saw making — not as a word, but as something done with your hands, every day, without asking if it made sense.
Germany. Bremen was the first place where there was no one left to tell me what came next. Every decision came back to me. There was no ready path. There were only the next decisions, one after another. Then Berlin — a different city, the same mechanism.
USA. I don't have one clear scene from that time — only a feeling that stayed: that the world was larger than the place I stood in. That feeling never fully went away.
Gran Canaria. That's where I first built something of my own, from nothing, with no one to follow. I didn't know yet if it would work. I just did it, day after day.
Bremen / Berlin
Germany, referenced in Section 02 — the first place with no one left to ask.
Gran Canaria
Where something of his own was first built, from nothing.
What Darcode Left Behind
A few years later came Darcode. I don't want to write about it as a legend, or as something that "prepared me for something bigger" — because at the time, I didn't know that.
There I learned that an idea alone isn't enough. There are clients with expectations. There are decisions that turn out wrong. There are things you have to fix — sometimes more than once, before they work.
I talked to people who paid for what I made, and I had to learn to listen, not just to create. I made mistakes that cost time and money. I made decisions I later reversed. More often than not, I had to get it wrong before I understood what actually worked.
I didn't know then what those years would become. They were simply years of work.
What Remained
Looking back, certain things kept returning, regardless of place or period.
Hands that always wanted to make something physical, not just think about it.
Attention to detail — something others sometimes saw as excessive, and for me was simply how I worked.
The need to make something of my own, even when no one had asked for it.
I didn't call it a pattern then. I only see it now, looking at all of it together.
Ciągłość
A hand at the material, a fragment of a tool, a table, light in the workroom. Theme: "what remained," not "what I made." Must not read as a Migula product shot.
Flag for photographer/editor: this is the one slot in the chapter most at risk of drifting into product photography. It should look like continuity, not a presentation.
Still Becoming
Berlin. Łódź. The same table, a different address. The same material under my hands.
The cities changed. I changed too.
Today, the same hands work on something else. But the movement stayed the same.
What does a person carry with them, when every place keeps changing?