MY Story – monika k. adler, Photographer and filmmaker
THE Monika K Adler story
Born during the collapse of communism, my childhood was spent between my grandfather’s cinema and the psychiatric hospital where my grandmother worked. I silently observed the fragility of human nature and learned early on that sanity is political and reality is negotiable. Madness felt genuine, while cinema felt prophetic, and reality itself seemed staged.
I didn’t fit in and refused to try. Early difference is punished but also sharpens instinct. I escaped to art school in Warsaw, not to be trained but to be contaminated. Five years immersed in films, cafés, exhibitions, and nocturnal conversations taught me to see sideways, read between structures, and live without permission. I chose disappearance, a year of isolation, and used tarot as a mirror. I became The Fool: a sacred idiot, fearless initiator, leaping from radical trust, not ignorance. Photography followed. Paris freed me, New York devoured me, and Europe never let me rest. I arrived in London with nothing left to defend. That’s where love rewired me. Where fulfilment replaced survival.
I am no longer the Fool. I am the Trickster. Shape-shifter. Disruptor. Saboteur of stagnation. I exist to fracture comfort and seduce change. If this unsettles you, good. If it attracts you, even better.
@monikakadler
