Karolina Kuler-Piotrkowicz "Farm Animals"

Showcasing the graduates of the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme 2023/2024. More photos will be on display at the exhibition

in Warsaw, starting 26 April, 2025.

When I got back from the hospital once – and I’d been away for the whole month because I’d been in Konstancin with my spine, I’d had it operated – my husband went to bring her from the fields. It was how we did it then – a cow had a chain and you tied her in the field, not that she would go there on her own. So, I say to my husband: Edek, I will just take a look at the vegetables in the field and come back in a while. And this cow got on mooing so loud, she ran through the fields, right across, towards me and started sniffing my body. You cannot imagine how much I cried… How is it possible that an animal was so attached… I liked her a lot. In general, I love animals. Let’s take this horse, we had. What a horse it was… When my husband was selling him, I got on a bicycle and went to Chynów, a nearby village. I just couldn’t stand that. He had been with us for so long – since he was a foal. We kept him for 22 years. He worked and then he didn’t (later, we had a tractor). But he was so attached to me that when I called ‘Karuś, Karuś,’ he would pull away from my husband from the yard! Because it was different then, there was a fence here. He simply pulled away and got out of the yard. And my husband says: ‘Aha, so the horse’s escaped.’ You could already hear the ‘doodoodoo’ as he was galloping next to the house. So, I jumped out to the yard – it was still dark – and I shouted, ‘Karuś, Karuś, where have you gone? Why have you left me?’ He neighed and was just right back. Such a horse he was! He was simply attached to me. We’d brought him up. We bought him as a foal, a small foal. He couldn’t work in the field, so we took his head, like that, we took the bridle and we walked together when there was some work to do. We walked side by side.